It's Five by Five
by OuyangDan
Summary: This thing seeped into my brain and wouldn't go away, and the result was a Dragon Age - Buffy/Angel crossover. Full of OCs who don't belong to me, but were graciously loaned.
1. Chapter 1

Kahrin was tossed rather unceremoniously from the club's back door, stumbling into a heap of broken-down cardboard boxes.

"Oh, c'mon now boys. We were just having a bit of fun."

She sprang easily to her feet as the bouncer slammed the door shut.

Apparently fighting was frowned upon. She rolled her eyes. She'd heard that one plenty of times.

Fighting three big men at one time who got their little feelings hurt by having their collective asses handed to them by the tiny girl was grounds for being tossed out the door. She grinned, tossing her dark hair out of face and brushing her tank top off, smugly.

It wasn't even a nice club anyhow. Whatever. She gave a shrug and turned on her wide-heeled boot and the clack it made in the alley was the only sound on the wet pavement aside from the familiar creak of her favorite leather pants. She pulled a slightly-crushed pack of cigarettes from her waistband and took the last one in her lips as she slid the silver Zippo from her tight pocket, pausing to light it in a cupped hand, inhaling in the calming feel. There had been months on end where this was the only joy she'd ever had.

She felt him behind her long before she saw him, long before he yanked the cigarette from her mouth and crumbled it in his large hand.

"Shit! That was my last one!"

"Those things are going to kill you."

Kahrin rolled her eyes. "Either they will or this job will. You're suddenly concerned with my longevity? I think you're on the wrong career path, love. Early death sentence comes with the territory, you know."

"Not if you're careful. Plus they make you stink." Carver leaned forward to kiss her, putting one hand into her hair.

She pulled back, arching her Cousland Eyebrow at him and making a face half mocking and half disgust. "Now I know your trippin' if you think you're going to be doing _that_." She sidestepped out of his path, pushing away the tingle in her stomach from his sudden closeness that made her feel wrong.

Sometimes she liked feeling wrong.

Carver smirked at her. "That's not what you said last night." He followed her as she continued down the alley.

"Are you buggin' or what? Look, I know it was all rock em' sock em', but that was a one-time lapse of my judgement. Don't come sniffing for a repeat performance." She rolled her eyes, hooking a thumb in her belt loops. She tapped a worn-down nail against her belt buckle.

"Not even if you begged. You've got bloody Anders Breath."

She stopped and spun around to look at him. "Excuse me, stalker boy? What, can you … people smell everything. That never stops being creepy, you know."

"Oh, yeah. Completely. All over you. Plus, I saw it. With my super keen vision."

"You followed me?" She gave him a casual shove with one hand that tossed him back into a dumpster. "Oops. Sorry." She shrugged and kept walking. "And for all your Super Vision, you didn't see shit. You're buggin' over nothing" she said over her shoulder, disappearing around the corner, picking up her pace to put distance between them. Really, she should have known he'd get clingy.

Carver dropped down from a fire escape in front of her. "Really? Huh. Looked like you were pretty chummy."

"What? I'm not allowed to talk to him now? Whatever, bro." She paused briefly, listening, then jumped up and grabbed the bottom wrung of the fire escape and swung herself up onto it.

He jumped up from the ground, following her easily. "Is that what you're calling it? I have a few different words for that. I told you a few of them yesterday."

"Look, Holmes," she turned, her nose coming level with his chest, "nothing happened, and even if it did, it's not the same, and you know it. He's different. He's … well you know. You …" She shrugged and laughed, "are sadly lacking in that department. No offense."

"Shows what you know."

She stopped, caught pulling herself up on the window ledge of the next story. "What?"

"I guess you don't know everything, now do you?" Carver leaned against the balcony and shrugged.

"Look, I'm on patrol. If you are going to continue to vague things up for me, can you at least try to be useful and tag along? Use that skulking thing you do so well?" One more bound and she was on the roof, striding along, not giving him another glance. She knew he was following her, despite how quietly he moved, as if part of the night itself.

She paused at the edge of the roof, listening, feeling for anything out of the ordinary. The night had been awfully quiet so far apart from her little stunt in the bar, and that was never a good sign. She ran a hand through her loose hair and frowned.

Well, _shit_. Maybe she should have stayed in prison. Well, the company in prison wasn't nearly as fun as out here, she spared a glance for ol' broody behind her. Enough of that. Everything about that was wrong. In the bizarro world in her head, though, could shit get any more weird? When was the last time she'd done anything that made a damned bit of sense?

_Let's just not let that little escapade get back to Finn. He'll have an apoplexy. Again._

Carver was mumbling away about something. Whatever. He was probably still going on about what he thought he saw in the bar. She snickered to herself. She didn't realize things like him could get jealous.

God damn this was a hot mess, wasn't it. She'd been bored and, OK, sure, a bit lonely. She was sure that there was something in her fucking job description that meant she wasn't supposed to do _that_. Or enjoy it so fucking much. What fun was supernatural strength though, if you couldn't knock down a wall or two while having a rowdy time?

She rolled her eyes to herself and then her attention was caught by a sudden movement down below.

Kahrin gave Forehead a bit of an elbow. "You up for some fun?" She jerked her head towards the alley, then frowned at his face. "I meant the killing kind. God, C, get your head out of the gutter."

She stood up and jumped, straight down, bending her knees slightly against the impact.

Two of the bastards stopped and looked up at the sudden noise. "Move along, little girl, and we won't make you dessert." The one that spoke had blood already running down his chin.

"Well, I don't know." She cracked her neck and gave them a faux-innocent look with a tilt of her head. "Is there going to be ice cream? I could really go for some ice cream. Maybe a bit of rocky road if you have any. I am awfully hungry."

"Oh, you're mouthy."

"And you're all toothy. It works out." She slid her weapon out of the back of her pants, the familiar feeling smooth against her palm and giving her a comfortable reassurance. She gave it a spin around her fingers, smirking. The thrill of the impending fight already pumping in her ears. The darkness of the job was in her blood. She lived for the kill, and maybe someday it would kill her, but she was really all right with that.

It was part of her redemption.

Mr. Jabberjaw tossed aside the kid they had been chewing on and the poor bloke staggered a bit, catching his balance and holding his neck, a delirious shock on his face. The attacker lunged at her, his movement almost too fast to see.

Almost.

She had the stake through his chest before he had time to touch her. His friend jumped slightly as he disintegrated and blew away, just dust in the wind.

"I thought you were in prison."

"It's a good thing you don't get paid to think." She shrugged and stepped forward as he turned and ran, his prey abandoned. She could have chased him down, but she knew she didn't need to.

He was knocked back towards her promptly, sliding across the wet ground on his back, stopping just a few feet in front of her.

"I think you lost this," Carver said, seeming to have appeared from nowhere.

"Thanks! I hate it when my toys don't stay where I put them. Just makes me so cranky."

The vampire rolled over, looking up at Carver and hissing. "You! You kill your own kind?"

"What? This again?" He rolled his eyes, as if tired of explaining this for the fifty-billionth time. "Sorry to disappoint, mate. Things change. You're going to have to try to keep up."

"Now you're a lapdog for her!" the vamp laughed, mockingly.

"Hey!" Carver frowned. "Am not. I … have my own reasons. And … she's prettier than _you_, anyhow. Nothing personal." He stepped on the guy's chest and grabbed his head, twisting it quickly off of his shoulders, watching as he evaporated into dust.

Kahrin turned to the kid, probably no more than nineteen. He looked like he was about to be in shock. "Hey. Go home. Drink something. Preferably something stiff."

The kid blinked in disbelief, before stepping backward several steps, then turning and running.

Kahrin still had the stake in her hand when Carver walked back up to her, brushing his hands off.

"You gonna put that away now?" he chuckled a bit nervously, eyeing it.

"What? This ol' thing? Like I'd waste my best stake on you. Why? Make you nervous?" She pushed the point slightly against the closure of his shirt, cocking her eyebrow at him.

He pushed her hand away. "That's not funny. Shit, sometimes I think you really are nuts."

"Well, I guess that depends on who you asked. Some would say fucking you confirmed that." She smirked and stuffed the stake back into the rear of her pants.

"Also not funny."

She rolled her eyes again, turning to walk off, and he grabbed her by the arm. "Hey." She narrowed her eyes.

"You like me." It wasn't a question. She knew. She sighed.

"Fine. Whatever. You don't annoy me. Okay?"

"No. Not good enough. You say you don't. You say it was a mistake, but you liked it. You like me. Bugger it all, I like you too."

"This again? And, just where, exactly, do you think this is going to lead us?" she pulled away. So what? So she liked him. Like that was going to help the situation at all.

"I don't know, shit. A few good years? To pretend we're …"

"What? Normal?" Her face scrunched up in disbelief. "We're not normal, Carver. We are so far from normal, normal has it's own zip code. I learned a long time ago that sometimes some distance is the best thing. Get mine and then get gone. Besides, Finn would-"

"Finn? I thought you didn't work with Watchers anymore."

"Yeah, well, they don't seem to know that, do they? Just when I get all cozy in the slammer and life is finally five by five, they come along and bust me out."

"Well, that's what you get for trying to help soul-boy."

She shot him a dark glare.

"I like you better when you're not so chatty."

"I know how you can fix that."

"Back on this again? You're like a broken record."

"If I annoy you enough, maybe you'll hit me again." He raised an eyebrow down at her.

"If you're lucky."

"I'm trying to get there, yeah."

She smirked. "C'mon. The sun's comin'. You'd be a waste as a pile of dust." She turned and walked off, perhaps putting an extra swing in her hips as she did, hooking her thumbs in her belt.

No sense in wasting a good thing.


	2. Chapter 2

Kahrin rubbed her eyes.

Seriously it was too early for this shit, but a deal was a deal, so even though she was pretty sure the birds weren't even awake she pushed open the door of _Anders Investigations_. She hadn't even had time to change her damned clothes, but it wasn't really like she had a home to jaunt off to anyhow.

And of course _she_ was sitting at the desk when she walked in, looking perky with her sports bottle of water in her cutesy strappy sundress, acting like she knew dick about the computer in front of her, pecking away at the keyboard with two fingers.

Actually, if Kahr remembered right … She smirked.

She strode across the room and hopped up on the break table next to the coffee maker and scooped up the box of donuts, helping herself to the last two glazed ones before anyone even noticed she was there.

Finally the redhead looked up at her and arched an eyebrow. "Oh. It's you. What the hell are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be serving life for murder?"

"_Attempted_ murder. No one died. It was a misunderstanding. I did my time, Red." She shrugged. "Most of it anyhow. Finn was all swell and busted me out."

"You stabbed the _mayor_ of Ferelden."

"_Allegedly_. He had it coming."

"I heard you were fucking him at the time."

"Right. Had it. Was. I got confused. Nobody's perfect, Red." She stuffed the rest of the donut in her mouth. She hadn't eaten a proper meal in days.

"Well, don't get any ideas about boning my boss."

"Oh, Red. I wouldn't dream of getting groiny with your squeeze." She cocked her Cousland Eyebrow at her as Saoirse narrowed her eyes. It was bloody obvious they were sweet on one another. "I'm just here to get twelve-steppy. He asked me over. I just had a few stops along the-"

"And no more with the trying to kill him." Her eyebrow shot up. "We had enough drama around here with Little Miss Ferelden, and he's in a good place now."

_Anora. Perfect little Anora. Slayer of the Year._

"Look, Red, we're on a strict no staking policy now." She rolled her shoulders trying to loosen the tightness leftover from sleeping on a floor with-

Fucking hell. Forehead walked in the door. _How in the world... in broad daylight... shit. Sewers. Figures._

He walked right over to her, bold as brass. "Hey! Donuts!"

Kahrin clutched the box away, habitually. "It'll cost you one carton..." She blinked and blushed faintly under her tan skin and absently rubbed the tattoo on her face. "Oh, hey, sorry. Habit I picked up. What do you want with donuts anyhow? You don't eat." She proffered the box anyway, almost afraid of the answer.

"I know, but they go nice with my morning cup." He reached into the fridge under the table and pulled out a butcher's container as if he owned the place, sloppily dumping some into a mug and shoving it into the microwave, jamming at the buttons with his big fingers. "You left in a hurry."

She glared. "No reason to hang around when the ride's over, C. I'm not big on the snuggly portion of the day. Especially when the other party is on the liquid breakfast. Nothing personal."

"Carver." Of course now was the perfect time for Saoirse to stick her nose into things.

"Sister." He glared back.

"I don't think you get to call me that any- wait. You didn't... Oh. I'm going to be sick. Fuck, you two."

"Pretty much." Kahrin stretched her arms over her head and popped her shoulder. "And I gotta say, Red, after that ride, I'm almost sad girls don't do it for me. I'm dying to see if it runs in the family."

That shut her up. Possibly for the first time in Kahrin's memory of her. And it was long and colourful memory of the former cheerleader.

The microwave beeped and Carver gave her a light smack on the ass, and she gripped his wrist reflexively, being just a little faster than him. "Hey there, hands. Let's not get grabby. I'd hate for you to meet the business end of Mr. Pointy before breakfast."

"You'll be back."

"Hey, dreamer. You know what the definition of insanity is? It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Kahr shoved him away with a wry twist on her lips. "Learned that in murder rehab."

He snorted and pulled his mug from the microwave. It stank like hot copper.

Thankfully Finn walked in, his nose stuck in some fat tome written in little scribbles that Kahrin didn't have a hope in any number of hells of recognizing. He adjusted his glasses as they slid to the end of his nose. The years had been rough on him, but in a good way. Five years ago Finn never would have come down to the pen and sprung her. And five years ago he'd never have all that scruff on his face. Or be so obviously packing a piece in the back of his jeans.

Or, hell, be wearing jeans.

He stumbled through the sunbeam which neatly divided the office and was probably all that was keeping Saoirse and Carver from lunging at one another when he looked up.

"Kahrin, you're here! Wonderful. Anders is expecting you."

She rolled her eyes. "Fuckin' A! Let's get rockin'. Donut?" She held the box out to him as she dropped down off the table. Saoirse shot her a look. "Not in a sharing mood? Fine. Getting ready for a kill gets me all hungry and horny, and clearly one of those has been taken care of."

She tossed the box on Saoirse's desk and stepped into the elevator with Finn, who tried to pull the gate shut as Carver blocked it with his arm. "I'm comin' too."

"Oh, sorry Junior, but your ride's over. This elevator's going down, and you already did. You'll have to get back in line." Kahrin pushed him from the lift and slid it shut as he scowled at her, his forehead pulling down into the beginning of a massive brood.

The lift was pathetically slow, and the ride not at all awkward. No. Her eyes were drawn to the scar along Finn's throat and she bit her lip hard. It wasn't too far off in her memory that she'd hunted him down herself and put it there with a broken shard of mirror in a fit of pique. There was a time that he'd told her that her goals were not in line with the mission. Didn't matter that her whole family had been killed and tortured. She wasn't entirely broken up about her mum who was too busy enjoying the falling down and passing out parts of life to get her a dog of her own, but still, it was the principle of the thing. So she and Finn'd had a nice violent chat shortly after the whole Alistair stabbing party.

Then she'd come after Anders.

The bastard had refused to fight her, and eventually the fight had left her, and he'd refused to kill her when she'd begged.

_I hate that it hurts. I just want it to be over._

_Sorry, Kahr, redemption doesn't work that way._

_What the fuck do you know?_

_I know a little about this._

That he hadn't given up on her had meant something.

Until Miss Goody Two-Shoes with the stake shoved up her English Channel had shown up, and the world had gone to hell in a handbasket faster than she'd been prepared for. _Someone_ had taken a bit of exception Kahr's little stunt with Mayor Theirin and to save everyone a bit of a headache she'd turned herself in.

Not until she'd landed an elbow in her stupidly perfect nose, though.

But that was then, and now they needed her. It was nice to be needed. Kinda made her feel all tingly in the lower reaches.

Anders came out from the back of the dank little apartment, toweling off his bleached hair. She didn't even want to know how vain a vamp had to be to maintain that colour blonde, or how they did, not having reflections and all. Maybe as obsessed as Forehead had to be to keep his hair so pretty and coiffed all the time. She'd never seen two dead guys fuss with hair more.

Anders pulled a black t-shirt onto his wiry frame and tucked it into his pants. "Kahrin. Lil' nip. Finn says you have some information for us."

"Yeah. As it turns out, it's easier to rough up informants if you're able to actually get to them. And if the person you're getting it for is alive and not ragingly evil." She hopped up onto the kitchen table. She still had a nice scar along her neck from that escapade that was perfectly fang-shaped. But hey, everyone was alive and kickin' now. "Seems your boy Vael's been on ice for a few years."

Anders froze in place. "Vael? You're kidding."

"Not even. And he's got a real jones for you babe. I don't know why, but he's gone to a lot of trouble to find you." She ran a hand through her hair.

"Seems he's found a way to put himself into a form of stasis, and now he's been awakened by a demon. I believe he's found a way here." Finn rattled on as if he was lecturing, taking his glasses off and cleaning them on the bottom of his rumpled button-down shirt.

"Uh, no." Anders frowned at them both. "Vael and I sort of go back." He was really good at stating the obvious.

"What'd you do? Screw his pooch? From what I heard he's mighty pissed off."

"Well, not exactly." He gave her a well-practiced frown, the kind that wears into a face over centuries. Velanna and I kinda... ate his family and pretty much his entire parish."

Kahrin gave him her Look.

"Velanna had a thing for religious orders. Said they were like cookie jars."

"So we're talking big time V then." She hopped off the counter and took the three steps to the fridge because her stomach was raging, unsure why she bothered, because all that was in it was a butcher's cup of pig's blood.

"Yeah. Something like that." She didn't like the ominous sound of his voice. Next time she got into bed with someone, they needed to not have two hundred years of baggage that liked to go portal jumping for vengeance.

Fucking vamps and their fridges. She was friggin' hungry.


	3. Chapter 3

She really hadn't had to think twice.

_Vengeance is back._

Finn had sat on the other side of the glass from her, his face beat to hell, and from what he'd said, Saoirse wasn't in good shape either. She knew the world had been going to hell. Someone had been stupid enough to try to start a fight with her in the exercise yard and if she hadn't had the reflexes to grab the barbel and bash the large woman's face it she might have been another penitentiary statistic.

_Get back from the fucking glass. Now._

He'd barely had time to move and she was through it. A person would have thought that a City-State Pen might have the sense to use plexiglass with someone like her inside. A couple of elbows to the guards' faces and she grabbed Finn by the back of his shirt and pulled him out the window. She felt bad, because Vallen had always been fair to her, and she felt awful for how her face was going to look after that, but this was kind of a literal life or death matter.

Thankfully she managed to land them with the impact taking her between Finn and the pavement.

She wasn't going to lie and say it didn't hurt. If she didn't have Slayer healing that might have actually sucked.

What came next was worse, though. She'd never met Vengeance face to face. She'd heard the stories. Little Miss Perfect Blonde never shut up about blah blah blah I had to send my boyfriend to the Tower or Red's endless nannering about how she just didn't know what he was like, because only Saoirse was ever an expert on anything when it came to Anders and she was more than willing to tell you about it.

Kahrin had never taken quite the ass beating like she had in that old convent, except that time when Anora had tried to gut her like a fish. What was it with Anders and damned churches and holy buildings?

After he'd knocked her through a few walls and roundly beat the shit out of her everything began to be a blur. Her head rang and she saw Finn shake as he tried to unload the tranquilizer gun into him, and while he was getting better in a pinch, he kinda miffed on the aim, then he was tossed casually aside.

Kahrin felt her head hit the bricks, and she dazed for a few minutes. She hardly had enough sense to pull the syringe from her pocket and ram it into her hip while Anders was distracted by climbing over the pile of rubble.

"You will not stop me from this."

Finn scrambled away, bleeding from the ear a bit. She was proud of the guy. Back in Ferelden the guy would have fainted dead away watching her stake a vamp, and here he was not even flinching from his own blood. All grown up and bustin' gals outta jail and getting his hands dirty.

While she was busy being proud she took a boot to the gut. Why in the world Vamps were so fond of god damned combat boots she didn't know. They didn't need them to do damage to a spleen. She caught Anders' leg and spun around. They traded a few blows, hers slower than she liked. When Vengeance took over he was faster than even her almost premonitory instincts.

"And here I thought you were down for the count."

"What? And miss all this fun? I was thinking of updating all my wardrobe to go with head wounds."

"You always were just a pretty mouth."

"I'm a lot more than a mouth."

"You've got the thirst, just like me," he swung at her and she blocked most of them, but her vision was blurry, and her tongue was getting thick. She landed a kick to his chest that sent him back a bit but it was weak and she managed to knock herself back.

"I'm nothing like you," she spat. She didn't have this need to avenge anymore. Not after Anders had helped her. The bright blue glow of his eyes narrowed as he lunged at her, and her reflexes were too slow to dodge away in time. But that hadn't been the plan, anyway.

He yanked her up by the hair, exposing her neck. "No, but you will be."

She couldn't make any noise when the teeth sank into her neck. The numbness began in her shoulder and sent sharp, painful tingles through her arm and into her fingers. The blood was pulled from her neck and she could hear him take it in heavy gulps, greedily. It fucking hurt, and all she could manage was a throaty rattle.

Usually her job required her to not get to this point.

Whatever was necessary, though, right?

She didn't know how much it was going to take for it to take effect, and while some part of her hoped it wouldn't really require the whole tank, she silently hoped it would.

Redemption.

She hit the ground like a bag of hammers as Anders staggered back.

"What did you..." He rubbed at his forehead, wincing, his eyes settling back to brown.

Even as she felt her vision tunneling out, she smirked smugly. "One last dance, baby, just for you and me. I did what I had to do. You'd have done the same for me."

Her head hit the concrete hard as he disappeared from her vision.

The ER doors smashed open with authority and Carver grabbed the first person in a white coat that he saw by the shoulder.

"She needs help. Now," he snarled, focusing on keeping his face smooth. He had Kahrin slung carefully in one arm, her pallor pasty despite her normal complexion. He could feel her heartbeat barely holding on, and he'd be damned – again – if he was going to let it stop.

"What's happened?" The startled doctor grabbed a gurney and wheeled it, motioning to a team of nurses, as Carver laid her on it carefully and then stepped back. Her blood was smeared across his sleeve and hand and he shook, staring at it, swallowing hard.

He needed to remember to feed more.

"She's lost a lot of blood." He looked at the doctor as if it should have been obvious. He'd hastily bandaged her neck, but the gauze was soaked through.

"Does she have any allergies? Are you family?" The doctor eyed him suspiciously as he wheeled her into a trauma room.

"I- I don't know. She doesn't have any family here. Just-" he grabbed the handle of the door and tore it off as if it had been attached with double-sided tape. "Just fix her, dammit."

The doctor watched him and narrowed his eyes. "I need you to be straight with me pal. Were you two doing drugs?"

Carver looked at him incredulously for a few moments, and briefly entertained the thought of throwing the ass through the wall. "What? Fuck... No. She's clean. She... shit. No."

The angry looking mark on her hip that was obviously from a needle didn't hold water for his story.

But if they ran a blood test it was not going to come back as anything they'd ever seen.

_Lyrium_, he was guessing, was not in a standard tox screen.

"If you're lying, she could die." The doctor stood still in front of him, as if refusing to do his damned _job_ until Carver confessed something or another.

If she died, sire or no, Soul-boy was going to have something to answer for.

"I'm not. _Fix her_." He kicked the door and stomped into the hallway, his hands in his hair.

Kahrin had spent the next few weeks in a coma. The dreams alone had been so trippy she was covered in sweat. She woke up feeling trashed, itching to move, and frankly unamused to find herself restrained to the gurney in a hospital prison ward.

_God damn it_. Helluva way to thank a girl for saving the world. She didn't expect everyone to make on the floor, but maybe a bit of a "Hey Kahr, we're over it since no one died" might be nice.

She gave a jerk to the restraints, testing the strength. Even in her current weakness she'd be able to manage them. She gave a look to the guard at the door. He was armed.

Outstanding.

That had been weeks ago, and she was more or less back to full form, dustin' and grindin' and keeping just a step or two ahead of the cops. As she sat here on the table in the hole Anders called an apartment, she remembered it. She still had flashbacks of those dreams, and they weren't pleasant. Goddamn slayer dreams, but she was sure the lyrium had done a trick or too on even those.

_Redemption. It hurts._

That's what he always told her.

If some ponce was going to go to all the trouble to come world-jumping to take down someone she'd gone to that much trouble to keep alive, then she had a few choice things to say to them. Not too many of them nice.

She didn't know who this Vael guy was, but he was not just going to come swooping in like some Prince of Darkness.

She smacked the palms of her hands down on her vinyl-clad thighs and smirked a lop-sided grin. "Well, then, kittens, if we're finished chatting about it, I'm going to go find this guy and have a nice gentle talk with him." She slid off the table. "And by "gentle" and "talk" I mean "sharp objects" and "not quite veiled threats" really."

Finn grabbed her arm. "I don't think talking to him is going to get any of us anywhere. Not anywhere safe, anyhow."

"We could let Saoirse talk him to death. She's really good at it. Five minutes alone with her and I'm begging for another coma."

Anders smirked, almost fondly. "You just need to spend more time with her."

"I'm sure you spend enough time with her for all of us."

"It's not all like that."

"Oh, of course not. You'd never get all bumpy and grunty with someone you work with."

"Well," Finn said, "short from a suicide mission of one, I suggest we lay out a plan. We'll need to find him, and soon."

"What we need is bait," Kahrin offered, arching her eyebrow. "And you need something edible in this damned fridge, Anders. A girl could faint away around you."

They both looked at her, with slight frowns.

No one ever liked her plans.

What the hell did they bust her out for?


	4. Chapter 4

Loss hit the team hard because they were such a tight group. They'd come together when they were all starving and were taking almost any job. They'd all wound up here for their own reasons, and when the Hawkes had lost their father, they said good-bye to any chance they'd had of any future they'd planned in Ferelden.

It was by a miracle that they'd fallen in with Anders while he was working on his rather vague mission of redemption. He'd been holing up in his apartment, avoiding people as long as he could until he had to take a job to meet his expenses. The problem with separating himself from people was that now and again it made them look a bit tasty after a while, and that was no way to assuage over two hundred years of guilt.

If Saoirse hadn't known him from Ferelden, recognized him when they ran into him by chance, they may have all been screwed. Or worse, poor. She had her priorities straight.

She and the twins had been his, somewhat begrudging, connection to the humanity he'd been trying to salvage and the people he'd been trying to help. Over the first few months they'd become a family in the loosest sense of the word, with Saoirse insisting they needed to work together and using her almost bossy nature to keep them organized. She shoved Anders into a social setting of sorts with family meals and nights out drinking.

Carver always grumbled, usually loudly and with a lot of words that would make a sailor blush, but he had no choice, really, because where else was a jock from a small hole like Ferelden to go? Bethany had been so happy to pitch in wherever she could, and she was gifted with the computer and the filing and helped get them on top and back in the black. Saoirse filtered the clients with a shrewd eye and irritated most of them until they paid their bills, and Anders and Carver handled most of the gruntwork.

Not wanting to be helpless, especially with an old _friend_, so to speak, from back home suddenly waking up from a coma and escaping from jail, reportedly on the run for murder, Saoirse took up the crossbow, though it gave her some trouble at first. Anders seemed to enjoy teaching her proficiency with weapons, and before they knew it, she was capable enough at not dying. Carver seemed to take to fighting well enough, if he didn't grumble about it endlessly under Anders' tutelage.

It was Bethany who was never meant to leave the office. She should have been safe there.

That's why, when they were here, just a couple of weeks after losing her to demons sent by Meredith's templars to flush them out, they crept along through the sewers in almost silence.

The guilt hung over Anders like a shroud, knowing how the loss hit Saoirse so hard and she blamed herself for leaving her in the office that day, but Carver seemed to brood more and kept to himself more than normal. At least he'd stopped yelling at them, shouting about how it was all their fault that Bethany was gone.

They'd had to pull it together, though, because this nest of vampires had been hunting and feeding every night, and if they didn't quell their numbers it was going to get worse.

The grating over the rushing drain creaked back and forth as Anders lead them across, silently, standing at the other side. He watched the other two cross slowly, first Saoirse, her new crossbow shaky in her hands, and the first sensible shoes she'd probably ever owned on her feet. Then Carver as he made his way, cautiously, to the middle.

The creaking and grinding of metal became suddenly loud under his weight and before Anders had the good sense to dash after him the chains holding it aloft gave way. Carver reached up to grab purchase and gripped on barely by his fingers, giving a shout.

"Carver!" Saoirse yelled, running forward as if she could do anything at this point, and Anders grabbed her back.

"Stay back! I'll get him." He set his jaw and grabbed ahold of the edge and made his way across, reaching out for him with one hand. "Grab ahold."

Carver reached out with one hand as the grate finally pulled free and both plummeted to the drain.

Saoirse's shrieking was probably a mix of her existing grief and fear of possible loss as she dropped her bow and looked over the side, all the way down. "No, no. Fuck, no."

Anders let himself drop down all the way hoping the to retrieve the boy and take him back up. The rebar impaling him, however, was going to make that a might tricky.

"Shit," Anders said softly, leaning down next to him.

"You-you're telling me." Carver's voice was raspy, the bar obviously having punctured his lung clean through. His chest only rose on one side when he struggled for breath and a slight hiss was heard when he inhaled.

Anders' froze with terror. It was too soon to lose another one of them "You have to hold on just a minute, OK? We're gonna get you out of here."

"Stop telling me what to do," he coughed a bit violently, blood frothing on his lips, "vampire. You and I both know this is it for me. I'm going to be done, just like—like Bethany."

"Don't talk, for once in your life, Carver, shut your damned mouth." Anders hissed at him.

"Anders!" Saoirse yelled down, the terror obvious on her voice though he could tell she was trying to restrain it, "Is everything OK?"

Anders couldn't answer her. He could hear Carver's heart slowing, and he was beginning to panic. Losing him now would kill her. Watching her grieve again would be too much for him.

He rubbed the front of his face. He knew one sure way to make sure that didn't happen.

"Carver, listen to me." He pulled Carver's face to look at him. "We don't have a lot of time, and I can-" he stopped. Was he really _considering_ this? "I can help you. But, you have to know, it's permanent. There's no going back, and the process is … unpleasant." That was an understatement.

He coughed again and there was more froth and foam and Carver's eyes rolled back a little. "What … and be- be like you?"

"Something like that. Carver stay with me. Shit." He couldn't even believe he was considering this at all. He hadn't done this since he'd had his soul. He hadn't fed on a human in decades. "Just, forgive me for this."

He didn't have time to second guess himself. There was not time to wait for a response, and it might have been too late already. He pulled Carver's limp body off of the bar, the blood coming out of him too fast … _too damed fast_. Before he could talk himself out of it, Anders closed his eyes and sunk his teeth into his neck, and began to drink despite Carver's weak yelp of pain.

He fed on blood every day. He lived on it. It sustained him. But the pig's blood he got from a butcher was nothing compared to the still hot and living blood that flowed out of the neck of Saoirse's brother now. Once he managed the first few reluctant gulps he almost couldn't resist the urge to drink him dry. It pained him, the realization of what he was doing, what he was possibly doing to the boy's soul. He wanted to choke on the tang of each swallow and yet he couldn't stop himself from the pull of _human_ blood. He tried to focus on the feeling of Carver's heart, trying to not let it slow too much, but the fall and the impalement had given it a head start and it was _human damned blood_. He was repulsed by the thought of his actions, and in his soul he was already feeling the guilt of what he might be condemning him to.

_Slow. Drink slow. Not too much_.

He didn't know if he was saving Carver or damning him. Possibly both. Perhaps Saoirse would hate him for this. Perhaps this was the wrong thing to … or she might understand.

His heart was faint and the blood was coursing hot in Anders' own veins. _Enough_. He shoved Carver away from his mouth hard with a grunt, restraining his bloodlust with every last bit of his self-restraint, and using his own teeth he tore his wrist wide open.

"Carver. Carver listen to me, you have to drink. If you-you, don't you'll die. Trust me." Carver recoiled from him at first, weakly, but stubborn and defiant until the last. "Drink, damn you. Don't do this to her. Not _now_."

He shoved his wrist at Carver's face again, right up against his mouth, and finally he took it, hesitantly, and after he swallowed once, wincing horribly from what Anders could only guess was the taste, finally he grasped ahold of his arm with both hands and fed.

Anders pulled away from him when it seemed he was stronger, even as the kid passed out in his arm. "What have I done?" He palmed his forehead, then scooped him over his shoulder. He turned, looking up to where Saoirse was, easily two stories above them, and leapt all the way up as if it wasn't even a thought.

Saoirse gasped at the hole in her brother before Anders had even laid him on the ground, still feeling the charge in his veins. Moving to take his head in her arms, her hands slipped in the slick mess on the side of his neck. Her fingers found the familiar puncture wounds and her eyes slid to Anders, realization and horror clicking over her pale features.

"What the fuck did you do?" She shouted. "You … fed on him? What's wrong with you?" She was shaking so hard, and then she saw Anders' wrist, and she pushed to her feet, backing away. "What … what have you done, Anders? What the _fuck_ did you do to my _baby_ brother?"

"Saoirse," he began, taking a step towards her, from which she retreated, "I couldn't see you lose another sibling. We just lost-"

"Don't you use her to justify this!" She pointed at Carver's still form on the ground, which was already beginning to heal the massive puncture.

Whatever he'd done, Anders knew it was taking. For better or for worse, they were going to find out if what he'd done had been for nothing.

"We had a chance, I took it!" He yelled, the euphoria of Carver's blood still pumping high in his veins, making his reactions more triggered. "If it doesn't work out, then," then _what_? He'd kill him himself? "I took a chance. I didn't want you to lose him _too_."

Saoirse put her hands up in the air, clearly disgusted, tears starting in her eyes. "Fuck this … I can't even … how could you do this to me? He's all I had left, Anders. I can't watch this." She turned and stormed to a ladder leading up and out of the sewer, shoving the manhole cover wide open so that he couldn't follow her.

When you'd been alive as long as he had, waiting until sunset didn't take as long as a person might think. He waited until it was safe and carried Carver back to the office and to his apartment. Not one to take any chances, he chained him solidly to his bed, and sat in a chair not far off, and waited.

He didn't have to wait long.

Carver jerked awake suddenly, thrashing against the restraints with a snarl, his face pulled into the bumpy forehead and fangs that Anders knew all too well.

He slammed the chains hard. "What am I doing here?" His normally brown eyes flashing yellow and feral as they glared hard at Anders. "What did you do?"

Anders didn't get up from his chair, but looked at him with a sad calm. "Carver, do you remember falling?

"I remember you! You monster, what did you do?"

It was safe to say that not a lot had changed. The real question was, how much.

"How do you feel?"

This made him stop thrashing. He blinked, and stared as if he almost had to think about it. "Stronger? M'hungry," he said finally.

"Of course you are. You're probably famished." He came over with a bag of blood from the butcher, and he noted that Carver only blinked at it once, but didn't seem to question it. They were always so hungry after waking.

He held the bag up for him to latch onto as if it were a bottle for an infant, and watched him empty it, and waited for him to ask for more, or worse, object to the fact that it was lukewarm or even that it was pig's.

It seemed to calm him reasonably. "Where's Saoirse?"

"I haven't seen her since-"

"I'm right here." Her lips were pressed thin and her arms were crossed and her hair was piled high on top of her head. She kept her distance, but watched them both, her expression almost unreadable as she took in Carver's new face. She had the crossbow in her hand, bolt loaded, but her hand was steady. "The real question is where are you? Who are you? Are you Carver? Or … what? Give me a reason not to put this bolt through your chest. Or yours." She directed the last at Anders.

Carver's face smoothed out and he looked at them both, the fight leaving him. "What do you mean? What's wrong?"

"You're evil." She snapped. "I'm just waiting to watch you prove it."

Anders noticed that he actually looked hurt, slightly confused. "Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

Anders turned to look at her, moving closer, and when he did she raised the crossbow at him. "Look," he said, hands in the air, "I haven't done," he motioned with his hands at Carver, looking confused in his restraints. "Not since I had my soul back. I … don't know what this means. It may have affected … the process."

Saoirse narrowed her eyes. "And I suppose we all wait to find out if he's on the liquid family lunch special before we know for sure? No thank you. You stay away from me, both of you." She began to back out of the room. She gave an almost sad look at her brother, then a furious one shot at Anders. "I'll never forgive you for this. Ever."

She kept the bow raised as she retreated to the lift.


	5. Chapter 5

"No."

"Oh, come on! What could go wrong? It's a solid plan, and we'll all be right there in case Red screws it all up!" Kahrin tilted her head, stuffing some taco into her mouth and catching some of the filling in her other hand.

Anders set the spread out on the counter, proud of himself for helping. He forgot, sometimes, that people needed to eat. It'd been a long time since he'd needed food, not normally bothering since he couldn't taste it anyhow.

"Ooh! Tacos!" Carver snapped one up, and Saoirse immediately smacked it from his hand.

"You don't eat, ass."

"I'll eat you if you slap me again."

"Just try it and you'll be dust."

"I'd like to see you try. Besides, I still remember liking them."

"And I remember how bad they made your ass stink."

"Maybe you should have kept your head out from under my ass."

"Maybe you should have watched where you parked your big ass."

"Shit, are they always like this?" Kahrin looked at Anders, her face a mix of incredulous and amazed.

"It's been better since he's changed." Anders shrugged. "They used to not get along."

She snatched the taco out from under the both of them. Not her fault if they weren't paying attention. She was half starving. Three hots and a cot didn't go as far as the City-State liked to make the public think.

"Finn knows where this twitchy portal thing is," she said waggling her fingers and talking around a mouthful of shell and meat. "I figure if we dangle something tasty in front of it then your boy might jump at a chance to get even." She shrugged her shoulder.

Saoirse sat on top of her desk and crossed her legs, dumping hot sauce on a new taco and looking far too perky. She always looked too perky, in her bright colours and sundresses. The giant sunglasses on top of her head held strands of hair out of her face and added to the effect when she narrowed her eyes.

"No, I don't like it. It's too risky." Anders crossed his arms.

"Please. She'll open her gob and he'll rethink anything sinister." Stuffing the rest of the taco in her mouth she hopped down from the counter. "Nice spread, bud," she said, wiping her hands on the backside of her jeans.

"I bet you say that to all the vampires." Saoirse didn't even look up from the Cholula sauce as she said it, short and snippy. "Does your knack to save time by wearing two week's worth of eyeliner at once say it all for you? Or, does that just work on my … brother?" Saorise still spat the last word like it was dirty in her mouth.

Carver didn't even bother hiding his smirk.

"Yeah, well, OK then. Moving along to the part when I don't let you get captured by a revenge-obsessed dude from the past, and you pretend that you can stand me for a moment."

"I'm so comforted that my life could be in the hands of murderer."

"_Attempted_ murderer," Kahrin corrected.

"Of course." Saoirse cocked her eyebrow. "Just so we're clear, any more 'attempting' and it may not go over well with me."

"We won't let anything happen to-"

"You'll excuse me if I've heard that one before." Saoirse set the bottle down heavily, giving pointed glances to Anders, Carver, then finally to Kahrin. "I guess I don't blur the lines as easily as all of you do."

Finn's desk was littered with an avalanche of books and maps of realms with names Kahrin couldn't pronounce and he was using a compass to draw circles over half of them. Every few minutes his brow would shoot up halfway over his head and he would frown, or he would nearly squeal with excitement and dig through the stack and pull out another reference.

Finally he shouted "Eureka!" and they all turned to look at him as he picked up the chart he'd been poring over. "I mean, I think I've pinpointed the location!"

Kahrin smirked with her characteristic eyebrow raised. Watchers and their books.

"Rightey-O then, Finn ol' chap! What's it gonna be? A right jaunt in the park? A promenade in the … shit, how do you talk and take yourself seriously? Where to?"

Every now and again that old child-like excitement in Finn would surface and he'd bounce up and down on his toes. "The Gallows!" he shouted proudly.

They stared at him, blinking.

"Well, yes, I mean, that isn't really happy news," he removed his glasses and began cleaning them, "but I am mostly certain this is where the portal will open."

"I love it when a plan comes together." Kahrin grinned. "Let's go, kids." She slid into her denim jacket, slapping the place where her stake was in the back of her pants.

Carver grabbed her arm. "You aren't going alone," his forehead slid into concern.

"Aww, look at you all concerned. I'm taking your sister and Anders, love."

He scowled. "At least take a real weapon."

"I thought I'd go with my strengths," she smirked. "Besides, I'll have your sister's sunny disposition in my arsenal. Who can fight with that?"

"I'm coming with you to watch your back," he slipped an arm around her waist and frowned.

"Look, liquid lunch, if we all make it back, I'll let you watch more than my back, OK? We don't need any distractions."

"That's not good enough."

"I've got to be the only Slayer in history who has a vampire tailing her because he's concerned for her health. Really, junior, I'm touched."

"You could be."

"We've been over this. You stay here."

He frowned at her deeply once and let her go. "Fine. It's not going to do any good to fight you on this. You're a bit stronger than me." He indignantly stole the last taco and trudged off.

The Gallows had one of those courtyards that sprawled out ostentatiously with the kind of concrete that sparkled even at night and had one of those flashy fountains with creepy statues in the middle of it. Typical of a law firm enough, but one built on an empire of pure evil had it's own special flavor of horrifying statuary.

It was conspicuously near the Boardwalk, which had a suspiciously high crime rate, and was often called the Wounded Coast by locals, but still boasted a lot of vendor food stands. Anders and Saoirse walked along quietly, Saoirse trying in vain to tuck all of the toppings of her Coney dog back into the bun. She could just tell how jumpy Anders was just in the area. If she was honest, Kahrin was too. She was pretty sure her name was on a hit list with their lot. They didn't hire for hits lightly, and when those hit men jumped sides, they tended to frown on that a bit.

With hit men of their own, usually of the fanged variety.

She had no choice but to watch from her vantage point, coiled up behind the lettering of the arcade, curled into the lower curve of the 'C', her crossbow resting on the criss-crossing wires. If she jumped too soon she'd give them away, and if she waited too long they could become the next meal to anything

that was likely to come leaping out of the portal, if this was even where it was going to pop up.

Anders stopped to catch some chili that had fallen out of the foil, and their pace slowed to a still as he wiped it from Saoirse's chin. Kahrin rolled her eyes, because if anyone asked them, they were just co-workers, but the gentle way that Anders moved around her and was cautious of the way he touched her, it was obvious that he was nuts about her. Perhaps not in the "lose my soul because I'm groiny with you" kind, but as the kind of person that would balance him.

The air carried a charge that Kahrin's preternatural senses picked up cleanly, and made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Like energy jumping across the ground as invisible bolts, it drew her attention firmly as the air seemed to warble.

With a loud crack the air near them parted and swirled, and a hole opened. Out from the hole jumped a man with auburn hair who crouched low, a bow in his hand, jaw clenched and a glare on his overly-pretty face. It couldn't have been any more clear from his lack of modern trends or overly-swoopy hair style that he wasn't from this time. She was pretty sure this was their guy, straight in from the powdered wig days. Or some olden days.

She'd kind of been out that … decade of school.

Kahrin curled her finger around the firing mechanism of her bow and held her breath. She had a perfect shot …

His bright blue eyes zeroed in on Anders almost immediately. Seconds later an arrow flew from his bow and Anders knocked Saoirse out of the way and took the shaft through his hand. A second arrow grazed Saoirse's shoulder as both of them ran in, Anders handing her a short, thin sword from under his coat.

"If anyone comes near you-"

"Like you have to tell me to save my own ass," giving the sword a practice swing, she stayed back as Anders advanced, breaking the arrow off and out of his hand.

At nearly the same moment Kahrin let loose her first bolt, then leapt down to sprint across the concrete in the direction of who she assumed was this Vael clown. She dove at his feel and he turned at the last moment, clubbing her upside the head with his bow.

She stood up and landed her elbow in his chest, followed by a hook to his jaw. It was almost as if he'd been expecting her, because when she spun into a kick, he darted back, nimbly, and nocked another arrow quickly.

Before the arrow ever left his bow, Kahrin was flung forward, prostrate, and she looked up to see Carver standing above her, the arrow meant for her clean through his chest, just above his heart.

Shit.

"I told you to stay away!" She rolled off the ground and gave the man in the long coat chase, who now had quite a bit of distance on her, and she could _feel_ Carver close on her heels. The man was gone before they'd even reached the fountain.

Their surprise was ruined. He'd seen all of them now, and if she knew anything about trackers, a quick glimpse was all he'd need to seek them out again.

"Get her out of here!" She flung an arm in Saoirse's direction. There was no reason to have anyone hurt, any _more_ of them hurt. "God damned stupid vampires playing hero with wooden projectiles flying willy-nilly about. When a splinter could ruin your existence you should be more careful." She rounded on Carver now, who was looking a bit like a party snack on a stick.

"Yeah, well you weren't supposed to be getting your ass handed to you by some really old guy." He reached out to touch the already angry bruise on her temple and she pushed him away.

"It's fine. I heal, and he's getting away!"

Before she could take off again, or worry about the wounds left in anyone, the hole through which Vael had just leapt started to crackle again.

"Get back!" Anders bellowed, seeing a flock of templar-flunkies – the muscles hired by the law firm – pour out just in time to intercept a giant steel crate that was projected from the tear. They kept their weapons aimed trained on the four of them as they tried to back away, linking chains through heavy handles and dragging the crate with them back towards the towering building.

"We need to know what was in that crate." Anders was oddly calm as they walked back, his eyes constantly darting behind them, all around them.

"Who cares about the stupid crate? We lost him. Now we have revenge guy out there running around. I'm sure _I'll_ sleep better." Saoirse rubbed at her shoulder and glared. "Thanks everyone."

Kahrin rolled her eyes. "That was some fancy footwork you did there, chasing him down, Red. You really saved the day."

"Yes, I see how well you stopped him with your head. No wonder all your plans work out so brilliantly. Are you always getting hit in the head like that?"

"Sister." Carver growled it as he pulled the arrow through himself.

"You and your pants stay out of this, Carver."

"Shut your gobs, both of you. Shit. We need to know what else came through." Kahrin was a heart beat from punching both of them, and she'd probably feel bad about one.

"She's right." Anders grumbled. "As much as I'm not thrilled to see Vael, something we know about is less trouble that something we don't. I don't like surprises."

"Yeah, usually 'surprise' ends with a knife in my gut or one of those fun comas. I'll pass. Let's see what my favorite watcher can drum out of those big dusty books."


	6. Chapter 6

_Beijing, China, 1900*_

The riots and the fires outside were growing closer to the small apartment they'd procured just on the edge of the walled city. The rioters had exploded into a cacophony of voices in many languages, and they all blended together in a way that even if Anders had recognized any of the languages he wouldn't have been able to parse out the words.

He was fairly certain that he'd heard shouts of xixuegui** off in the distance, and knew that it was probably time to prepare to flee. She couldn't resist a revolt.

The wide silk tie on his high collar was slightly choking him as he packed together their things. She'd been so patient with him since he'd stumbled into her in Romania after his run-in with that clan of Dalish. Things hadn't been the same, but they'd been tolerable if not tense.

The apartment was too exposed, and the thin paper screens were not going to protect them if that revolt got too close to them. Not to mention that half the walls and the décor inside was made of damned bamboo. Not particularly friendly for vampire longevity.

But she had to have her view, and the sight of the palace from here was almost perfect when the screens were open, and she insisted that after over a hundred years together, they would be just fine. She wasn't going to let any mere _humans_ stop her from enjoying the world if she wanted to.

He thrust a few more garments into their bags as the screen slid open, and Velanna swept into the room. Her face was warm with the flush of a fresh feed on her cheeks and it gave her a glow under the puffed coif of her pale blonde hair. Somehow it never failed to amaze him the way she could tear apart rebels in the middle of a religious riot and not get a drop of blood on her champagne-coloured satin dress. She brushed the front of it off, the high collar with the elaborate frogs down the front drew attention away from her ears nicely. She'd always been self-conscious of her ears, no matter how many times Anders told her that he'd been fond of them.

"There's nothing like a good massacre to get the blood pumping," she grinned at him sliding the screen shut, her chest heaving, something she did out of habit for his benefit since she didn't have to breathe.

"Aye, 'specially if the blood that be pumping isn't that of herself." He gave her a cheeky smirk and moved closer.

"You should go out and feed before we leave. I know how much you love a religious uprising." She placed a hand upon the front of his vest and arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow.

"I have my feeding done." He leaned closer to her, hesitating slightly, searching her face for some subtle change in her mood.

She frowned suddenly, the deep-set almost-scowl that had been practiced over many years of annoyance with him, with his _condition_. "On _vermin_. I can smell the stench of them on you." She shoved him away. "I thought you said you were going to stop that. That you were going to try. But instead, while we're out eating missionaries, you're waiting for your damned cat to drag rats to you so you can feast on their diseased blood! All while you secretly preserve the humans."

"I do," he looked sternly now, "an' without that cat I'd starve. I've been trying."

"Not hard enough! You want to stay with us, then be one of us. Don't live apart from us! You and your filthy soul!" She swung at him and scratched his cheek with her well-manicured nails, "If you want to be with me, prove it."

"Prove? An' how would I do that?"

She gave him a hard look for a very long time, then glanced significantly at the grey cat weaving around his feet. "You're so fond of eating filthy animals, then make this your meal, and follow me out into the excitement. I heard there's a slayer ripe for the plucking."

"Wiggums?"

"Yes, if that's the ridiculous name you've given that useless creature. Eat it, and we'll be on our way, or," she stepped back a few steps, smashing one of the elegantly carved chairs and pulling up the leg and holding it in front of her, "I'll take my leave of you here."

He looked between Velanna and the cat, the cat who had been his only constant companion since they'd arrived. He'd hunted for him, helped him avoid even having to feed on thieves and murderers. He'd saved his soul from the guilt of more human death.

Velanna would never understand that. Ever. She'd lived this way too long. Three hundred and fifty years had defined her to where there was no longer anything before the vampire she was remaining, whereas just the last fifty had changed him as truly as the day she'd changed him.

"I can't."

"Can't, or _won't_, Anders?" She moved towards him, her slippers muting the sounds of her steps.

"Take your pick."

She lunged at him then, her face changing and fangs sprouting from the porcelain-like features of her that had made her look harmless the night they'd met over a century before.

Anders snatched the cat up and dove through the screen into the riots of the night, running for both of their lives and not looking back.

_Kirkwall, Present Day_

"Well, personally, I think it suits you, forehead."

"Shut up. It fucking hurts."

"Well, maybe you should think harder before taking on an entire group of templars, then?" Kahrin rolled her eyes, holding something close to her her chest as they walked in the door of _Anders Investigations_ kicking the door shut with her wide-heeled boot. "Personally I think you got off lucky, that it was just a greatsword."

"Fuck you," Carver snapped.

"Not like that you don't. Sorry, broody. I prefer my rides more intact."

Saoirse looked up from her desk where she was trying to alphabetize the invoices. "What the hell happened to you?"

Carver gestured at the greatsword that was currently impaled through the middle of him. "Someone," he shot Kahrin a grumpy look, "ran into the middle of the Gallows to rescue that thing."

He grimaced and pointed at the orange tabby that Kahrin held in her arms and she responded with a lewd gesture. "No one said you had to play hero and run after me. Isn't like I haven't been run through before. Not too far off from being stabbed with a knife."

"It's a cat, Kahrin."

"He's cute. And I think you boys need one around here. A little less with the sharp objects and maybe some more with the soft and cuddly. You like cuddly, remember?" She gave him a very pointed leer.

"That," Saoirse pointed, "can not stay her. I'm allergic."

"Since when?" Carver glared at her.

"Since always, you ass. And get that out of you. It's gross. Bad enough I have to listen to you two … talk about things." She waved her hand at them and focused on her filing.

"Well, then get some Claritin or something, because this little guy is here for the long! I'll bet he'll just cheer the place up. Or whatever it is you two do when you aren't sitting in the dark and brooding over your blood habit."

"Who will do what now?" Anders stepped out of the lift and looked up into the room.

"Fantastic," Saoirse said, tightening her ponytail. "Now we'll never get rid of it." She forced a smile.

"We rescued him from the Gallows. I figured, a couple of vampires living alone could use a buddy. To keep the baddies away when Red isn't here to spook them off with that fantastic glare."

Anders' eyebrows shot up and what could pass for an almost happy expression crossed his face as she shoved the tiny cat into his arms. "For me? Really? I haven't had a cat since … well it's been over a century." He cradled him affectionately, looking immediately fond of him.

"Well don't go getting all gushy on me now," Kahrin said, planting one foot on Carver's ass and gripping the pommel of the sword. "Really, no hugs. That always end poorly for us." She yanked hard and pulled the blade clean out.

"Ouch. Shit! That never stops hurting." Carver grumbled and ran a hand over the hole in his shirt. "I liked this shirt too." He pulled the back around to try to inspect the matching hole on the back.

"Stop whining, ass." Saoirse didn't look up, two-finger typing and squinting slightly at the screen in front of her.

"How about if I shove a sword through your middle and see if you whine?"

"Why don't you just shove off?"

This never stopped being irritating. "Shut up, both of you, you're upsetting the cat. He's been through a rough night," Kahrin gave the tabby a scritch on the ears, still holding the sword, and watched as it put it's tiny kitten paws on Anders' face.

"_He's_ had a rough- no. Never mind. You're so making this up to me." Carver stomped over to the first aid kit and pulled some gauze from it and began an attempt at patching himself up.

"So, you gonna name him or what? I don't think 'Gallows Cat' is particularly shiny or happy, but ya know, I have no idea if vampires even keep pets …"

Anders grinned a bit, as if he'd already been thinking about this. "An Ridire Pounce," he said, simply. When everyone blinked at him, he shrugged. "Uh, well, you know. Sir Pounce-A-Lot. Like a noble Irish knight." He held the cat a bit aloft and regarded him.

"Right. Sounds good and fierce." Kahrin arched a Cousland Eyebrow at him as she wiped Carver's guts off of the sword and tossed it at the cabinet in the corner.

"I'm not calling him that," Carver scowled.

"Shut up, Carver." Saoirse kept typing, but obviously had to be involved, even though she neither wanted nor liked the cat. Though, it was probably the stupid grin on Anders' face that made her defensive.

"You don't have to call him anything." Anders had no attention for anyone else in the room, and Sir Pounce was now snuggling against his face, purring loudly.

"Great," Carver muttered, trying to get the medical tape off of his fingers and onto the skin of his abdomen, "so now we have a cat."

"Now you have a cat." Kahrin took the tape from him and patched up his wounds, patting him on the ass once to get him to turn around so she could get the wound on his back.

Seemed like it they were all kind of clicking into place, whether they admitted it or not.

*This is during the massacre of the walled city during the Boxer Rebellion in Beijing.

** Literally: blood sucking monster; Mandarin for vampire.


	7. Chapter 7

Kahrin yanked on her boot and zipped it up, cringing at the whirring noise it made in the stone silence of the dark apartment. She pulled her pant leg down over the top, straightened her tank, and stood up, looking for her jacket.

She should have been able to dodge the hand that grabbed her arm and pulled her back to sitting on the bed, but she was tired and hadn't specifically spent the hours just after dawn sleeping.

"Leaving already?" Carver leaned his nose into her hair, and she closed her eyes, thankful for the dark hiding her face.

"I have work to do, and I shouldn't be here to begin with, liquid lunch." She shrugged out from under his arm.

He ran fingers through her hair anyhow. "You're succumbing to my charms, admit it," and she could _hear_ the smirk on his literally damned face when he said it. Repeat performances where not her usual M.O., and yet here she was.

"I'm succumbing to the idea of not having to sleep in that roach motel I'm hiding in every single night. And stop sniffing me. That never stops being wiggin' me out."

Carver sniggered and pulled her down for another kiss, which she didn't fight. She never fought it anymore, and as wrong as that sounded in her head it didn't have to make any damned sense because she enjoyed it. Part of her enjoyed the absolute wrongness of it even as she worked so hard to play it casually.

Even as that wrongness lie in a grey area she didn't particularly want to get into. Even if technically the circumstances of his changing had some technicalities and oddities that she didn't fully understand or fully trust.

"We need to know what's in the box." Kahrin put a hand between their mouths and pushed him firmly away, standing up again and running her hands through her hair, smoothing the tangles he'd just worked into it.

Carver sniggered as he stood up and pulled his pants on, and Kahrin gave him a swift elbow to the ribs. "That's enough out of you. What are you, twelve?"

"It was one of the best years of my life, so why not?" He swung an arm around her and squeezed her a bit to him.

"OK, Forehead, ew. And secondly, no." She shrugged his arm off of her, which would have been a more effective point if she had actually left that morning.

As it stood she was going to have to do the walk of shame out of the lift in the previous day's clothes, and she wasn't looking forward to that. Not that she gave a particular damn that anyone knew she was enjoying the more rock 'em sock 'em parts of life, but having to pass by Red's desk and endure her trap yapping at her and sharing her thoughts on this situation was enough to make her avoid this ride.

Almost.

Of course, it didn't help that the boys lived like Bert and Ernie and if the dungeon of an apartment they shared was any smaller they would have had to use bunk beds. Lucky for her she was rather short and didn't really care if a rubber duckie showed up so long as she got hers.

Kahrin knew she hadn't been especially sneaky, stumbling in exhausted as she had after her patrol, but obviously it didn't matter because other than the occasional significant glance when the lift landed on the upper floor, Anders didn't comment. And thankfully neither did that nosy busybody.

He was awfully distracted by his new kitten. She'd never seen him fawn over a living thing that way, and she would rib him over it if she didn't think it kept him from complaining about the extra person in their apartment.

She took a deep breath and did her perp walk out of the lift, Carver predictably right on her heels. She went straight to the coffee maker and poured herself a cup, hugging it to herself in two hands, like the steam might breathe life into her all on its own while Carver poured himself a mug from the container in the fridge and shoved it in the microwave.

Saoirse, for her part, was sniffling up a storm, her eyes puffy and red and looking like she'd had a far better time the night before than talking the ear off of Phantom Rory who shared her apartment. In between sniffles she tried to stick to her typing and was quickly getting no where.

"Shit, Red, have you been watching the after-school specials again? You look like shit, all teared up like that."

"Fuck you. It's that sodding cat you dragged in here. I think it's trying to kill me." She blew her nose again, as Pounce wound himself around her feet. She huffed slightly, and when Anders turned around, she smiled a huge grin at him.

"I think Pounce likes you." Anders walked over and scooped the fur ball up from the floor. "Don't you? Who's a good kitty?" He scritched behind the cat's ears and frowned at Saoirse. "Are you all right?"

She sneezed and sniffled again. "Oh, I'm just great. Peachy keen." She glared at the cat, who reached out and touched her face with a tiny kitten paw, making her eyes instantly water more.

"He's worried about you because you're sick." Saoirse wheezed in slight relief when he pulled the kitten away and walked over to where Kahrin and Carver and Finn were gathered around the research.

Kahrin had set her mug on top of the table and walked over to where Finn was lost in his translation, steeling herself for a barrage of chatter she wouldn't understand. One of these days someone would remember to just do all of this beforehand and point her in the direction of whatever needed to be beaten and maimed and she and her stake would tear shit up.

Finn had a considerable stack of books that were teetering precariously on the edge of his desk, which looked like it had been salvaged from an alley anyhow, and that at any moment it could collapse under the weight of the tomes. Where in the hell he pulled all of these maps and charts, Kahrin never knew, but he seemed to have an endless supply of them handy.

"I have a hunch as to what came through that portal," Finn looked up, dark circles betraying just how much sleep he'd had as he handed her a heavy book of engravings. "I've marked the page, but don't bend it. That book is priceless and the only other known copy is in the Gallow's archives."

"That's pretty gruesome, man. I've gotta admit." Kahrin looked at an engraving of what appeared to be

a giant man with his mouth stitched shut and his face in a mask. He possibly had horns once, but they were cut off. "He looks a little 'grrr... arrgh...' here."

Carver set his mug down and looked over her shoulder. "What are the chains for? Seems like an overkill."

"It's a Serabaas. A magic wielder of his race. They are believed to be cursed," Finn's face looked as thought he'd bitten glass. "Their people brutally bind and imprison them. The portal left a residue that reads from their dimension. It could be one of them."

"Could be? We're not going to launch an assault on a 'could be'." She gave him an eyebrow and picked up a mug. "Could bes wind me up in the pen. The sleeping arrangements aren't as cosy there."

"We're not launching an assault at all. That would be suicide." Anders set Pounce down, who promptly hopped up on the desk, knocking two of the books to the floor and a sheaf of papers as he walked nonchalantly across. When he reached the space directly in front of Finn he flopped over on his back and exposed his belly, staring up at Finn in disbelief that he was not already being adored.

While Finn flailed his arms trying to figure the best way to dislodge the cat and all its hair from his books, Kahrin looked up at Anders in disbelief. "We're not? So we're just going to let them have whatever it is while we sit here all inept? Fantastic plan."

Anders smirked. She hated it when he smirked. "I didn't say that, now did I?"

He watched, amused, as Pounce leaped off the desk with a sheet of translations and rolled around on the floor with it and as Finn chased after him, his brow set it an angry arch. "We're not going to get anything accomplished this way, cat!"

"Finn, I think Pounce likes you too! Look, he's playing. He thinks you need to relax a little." Anders turned his attention back to Kahrin, who was once again trying, half-heartedly, to thwart Carver's hands. "What I was saying, is that we can't just attack the building. This requires a more … precise strike." He scooped Pounce up again and walked over to one of the maps, unrolling it. "There is a sewer entrance here. I think we could get in with relatively little attention drawn to ourselves and-"

"Whoa, hold on there, just a moment. 'Very little attention' tends to have a way of winding up with me in a coma, or Red nagging us over how close to dead you almost were." She slapped Carver's hand again. "Watch the ass, Ass."

She took a deep drink from her mug, begging her brain to wake up, and as soon as the thick liquid hit her tongue the copper tang made her reflexively spit all over the desk, and very nearly made her toss the breakfast she'd neglected to eat.

Carver looked down innocently at the mug of coffee sitting near him on the table. "Oh, oops."

"Oh, oh that's- I think that's the most disgusting thing I've ever had in my mouth. Oh." She dropped the one in her hand to the floor.

"I highly doubt that," Saoirse sniped from her desk, more than likely meaning to be heard.

Finn jumped up from the floor. "Oh, look at this mess! My research! Do you have any idea what you've done?"

Kahrin was still choking and sputtering pig's blood down her chin, it smearing across her face as she tried to wipe it off, and she still managed to shoot Finn a glare through watered eyes.

"I don't think I've ever realized how disgusting that is." Carver looked at her, blinking.

"Water, water would be good," she shoved him back hard, still coughing, and Anders began cleaning up the mess from the floor even as Pounce good-naturedly stepped through it and began making a decorative show of tiny kitten paws all around, swishing his tail proudly at his contribution.


	8. Chapter 8

_Ferelden, three years ago._

It all happened really fast.

Not exactly that part, though. Kahrin like to think she could draw out an experience for a long time if it suited her. And while this was supposed to be business, she didn't mind taking a bit of pleasure from it.

One moment she was astride him, grinning down, letting out a few obligatory grunts to let him know that he was more or less getting the job done. She rocked her hips forward, setting the pace, and leaned down to kiss him hard on the mouth.

He dug his hands deep into her hair and kissed her back. "I love you, you know."

She pulled back slightly and looked at him, "Hey, thanks. Clearly you're not so bad yourself, cowboy." She braced herself on her hands behind his shoulders and smirked. "Well, I guess technically I'm the cowgirl. But you'll forgive me if I don't call you 'bronco'."

The young mayor rested hands on her hips, and he might have laughed, she wasn't entirely sure. She couldn't think about that _right now_. Running her mouth along his neck and sucking at it slightly, she slid her hand up and behind the place where the mattress met the wall. She felt the cool handle of the dagger in her grasp at the same moment that he let out a slightly strangled moan and pulled her face back down to his. Kahrin let go of the handle of the blade for a moment to kiss him back.

"Stay here with me, Kahrin." _Fantastic, he was going to get all sappy over a lay_.

Changing the subject she leaned forward again, giving the appearance of needing to stretch, and reached for the dagger again, gripping her fingers around the hilt and pulling it out above him and sliding it carefully under the pillow beneath his head. The familiar smell of sweat and sex mingled in the air – that unmistakable smell of fancy flowers growing in damp soil.

She didn't like to tell people that she actually enjoyed some things in life, but if she were so inclined, the smell after sex was up there with things that she didn't hate. Especially if it was the result of a good romp with someone who treated her well enough and that she didn't despise.

This situation had all the basic ingredients.

Too bad this had to be the way of things. Business was business and it was, after all, survival of the fittest. She couldn't help it that she had enough blood to run her brain.

Whispering softly in his ear, "Alistair, we might have had a shot at being happy. I'm so sorry."

He cupped the side of her face and looked confused for a moment just before his face exploded with shock and and then pain. "Kahr, why …" The tang of his blood mingled with with the other scents as she slid off of him and for a moment it twisted her stomach.

She really did like him. Maybe more. She'd never know now.

"It's nothing personal, baby," she turned her back to him and wiped the blade off on the sheet. Her eyes seemed to go a bit haunted after a moment of looking at him, bleeding massively on the mattress and seeing that blood form a blossom on the stark white sheets.

She pulled on her clothes as quickly as she could, shoving the dagger into a sheath and then shoving it into the waist of her leather pants. Kahrin hesitated by the door, "For what it's worth, I hope you don't die."

She slipped out into the night and disappeared into the shadows.

_Kirkwall, the present_.

Kahrin walked out of the butcher shop clutching her brown-paper-wrapped parcel to her chest. She hated having to do lunch duty, and apart from that, she tried to not think about the fact that the mouth she spent a good amount of time attached to often contained the contents of this bag. With that thought in mind she turned into the drug store, scanning the signs over the aisles for the dental hygiene. Dude was gonna brush his teeth after every meal if she had to pin him down and do it for him. Maybe some breath mints, too?

Picking up the items she stepped over to the counter and tossed them up on top, then tried to pull some bills from her tiny pants pocket with one hand while not setting her package down.

"Sudden interest in dental hygiene? Is this something they impart on all the murderers in prison?"

Kahrin's muscles tensed and she turned around, giving the blonde princess behind her a smile. "_Attempted_ murder. Haven't you heard, I'm all rehabbed."

Anora gave her a strained smile. "I'm sure you had a perfectly adequate stint for leaving my brother to die. I mean, three years? That's enough, right? Completely makes up for shoving a knife in his belly while he exhibited his poor choice in company."

"Did you come here to bust my chops, try to drag me back all crying and repent-y back to prison?"

"Not exactly. The thought had crossed my mind, but places like that aren't really meant to deal with people like us, are they?" Anora raised a single eyebrow at her. "Knowing you, you'd just get out again. Bat your eyes at someone and get them to help you. Isn't that how it works?"

"You don't know what you're talking about." Kahrin grabbed her purchase from the counter, forgetting her change, and walked out the door.

"Don't you walk away from me, Kahrin." Anora was hot on her heels only the way another Slayer could be. "You don't get to get off that easy."

"You think it was easy? I don't think he knew his way around a gir-"

"I will beat your teeth in if you finish that sentence. I'm not going to let you just-"

"Let me? Oh, I'm so sorry, Princess, that I didn't ask your permission before getting busted out to help save the world. If that interferes with your tantrum, I'm oddly all right with that." Kahrin stopped and looked at her, her lips curling up on one side of her mouth and her shoulders shrugging slightly.

The right hook from Anora came quickly, and Kahrin barely had enough time to block it, dropping her bag on the ground with a thud that didn't sound particularly healthy for the contents. She held Anora's fist in her hand for a moment before shoving her back, and the blonde slayer's eyes flicked down to the bleeding parcel on the ground.

"You're _feeding_ them? You've gone to a new lo—"

"Well, the butcher shop was fresh out of donuts."

"And you're going to what? Rally them behind you? Get cozy in their beds?"

"Are you here to get all judge-y on me over vampires? Because I think just maybe I might have the kettle on speed dial for this one." She bobbed head slightly to one side, her eyebrow arching just slightly.

"That was different," she snapped.

Kahrin smirked slightly, she liked having a barb or two in her own corner. "Was it? Are you so sure it's all that different?"

Really, she shouldn't enjoy eliciting that particular glare from the self-presumed Queen of Ferelden, but she just couldn't help herself.

The difference between the two of them came from two elements. Where Anora had all of the classic training provided by Watchers over years of honing, Kahrin had picked up everything she knew dodging flying fists courtesy of one parent or another and then later on the streets. She knew how to improvise – she was a scrapper. So when Anora twirled in with a well-aimed kick Kahrin slid the bloody package on the ground over at her, causing her to trip.

She regained her balance and swung out with her right, and Kahrin ducked it with preternatural reflex, sticking out her leg to sweep Anora's leg out from under her.

Anora rocked back up to her shoulders and hopped up to her feet, then let loose a barrage of punches which Kahrin traded blow for blow with quick blocks, finally finding a small opening and driving her elbow up under Anora's chin, which knocked her back just enough to give Kahrin an opening to take off running.

She knew Anora was behind her. They were equals in so many ways. They shared the same powers and speed, and while she might have been considered the great hope of all of humanity, Kahrin wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of using her past mistakes to stop her from moving forward and doing her part. She never expected her forgiveness, but she was going to work for it. Eventually.

The whole trying to kick her ass thing was, admittedly, a bit of a deterrent.

Kahrin pulled herself up on a fire escape ladder and climbed to the roof, leaping neatly across the rooftops, making her way back to Anders' Investigations. She'd always been faster on the rooftops, except that one time, but to be fair, she'd had her own knife neatly twisted into her stomach.

Not that she probably hadn't deserved it. Well, maybe not that trippy dream coma.

She made the top of the office and flung open the roof access door with a loud scraping of rusty metal on concrete and was greeted with a face that was only vaguely familiar.

"Kahrin."

_Shit, Watcher's Council lackeys_. _Again._

She backed away, plastering a grin on her face. "Hey, now. I don't remember inviting you to the tea party."

The woman held a gun out in front of her, her dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. "You're coming with us now, Kahrin."

"You're buggin'. What are you going to do, put me down like a dog if I protest? Because I gotta say, that's not a real incentive." She held her hands up in front over her, palms out, wondering if she could kick it out of her hands before she pulled the trigger.

It was a non-issue, it seemed. Anora landed on the rooftop behind her, and another goon came around the skylight.

"Where's the vampire, Cauthrien?" the guy asked.

"We have the bottom of the building surrounded. They should have him down any moment. We'll have both of them for transport. Alive if we can help it," the woman shot back at him.

"What?" Kahrin and Anora exclaimed at the same time.

"That was not part of the deal. He was never part of it," Anora glared.

"You didn't think we'd tell you this part, did you? When you ally yourself with the very thing we are meant to cull, then you have to expect a little bit of resistance. Now stand down or we'll be forced to take you in as well." Cauthrien's face was cool resolve.

"You're trippin if you think that's gonna happen." Using the distraction Kahrin kicked the gun out of the woman's hand and knocked her to the ground. "You with me, Princess? I think we have some guys to save downstairs. Wanna set the pissing match aside?"

Rolling her eyes, Anora clocked the other grunt and he fell like a sack of hammers to the ground. "Let's go." Running to Kahrin's side the linked arms and flung themselves from the roof to the side of the next building, legs spinning in circular patters until the let go of one another and grabbed the fire escape of the neighboring building. Lowering themselves enough to jump to the ground, they joined wrists again long enough to clothesline a black-clad man running at them with a gun trained. As he went down Kahrin grabbed the weapon and spun around ramming the butt of it into the next face she came to.

While fighting each other their particular styles didn't help them with advantages, but as a team, they managed to play off of each other and take out the operatives quickly. Kahrin kicked the door in and they raced up the stairs throwing open the office door. Kahrin came to a dead halt, taking in the scene.

"Fantastic. Figures you come back just in time for food," Saoirse rolled her eyes, setting the sandwiches out.

"Did you get my blood?" Carver asked casually over his shoulder while trying to start coffee.

"What? No! I was busy keeping your asses from being hauled off to cheery London!" Kahrin crossed her arms and glared. "But, you know, you're welcome. I bought you a toothbrush, O-neg." She tossed it to him, hiding her relief that they all seemed to be fine.

"Thanks! Hey, look! It's got the bendy head for my hard to reach places!" He gave her a bit of a knowing grin. "Welcome back. We were about to send out the search party."

"The search party found me," Kahrin said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

"Why? Who's here-" Anders stepped out of the lift and stopped still, mid-stride. "Anora."

"Anders. I think we need to talk." She set her face in a hard line and motioned to the lift. "Alone. And, don't go far, Kahrin, we're not finished."

"Well, suddenly I'm not in the mood for sandwiches. Anyone else want Thai food?" Saoirse grabbed her purse and strode for the door.

"Right, let's go then." Carver was right behind her.

"Yeah, fuck if I'm sticking around for the show. You comin' too, Finn?"

He was already ahead of them and on his way down the stairs.


	9. Chapter 9

The lift was possibly the slowest one on the planet, and the ride down to the apartment made it feel even slower.

Anora stood far away in the corner, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression cool and placid.

"So, I come all the way here, because I was worried that you were in danger because of _her_ and I find out that you're hiding her?" When Anders looked at her she hardened her mouth into a line. "Are you two cuddle buddies now?"

"No," he answered simply, giving no indication of continuing on with any sort of explanation. He owed her none. Finn's decision to retrieve Kahrin from prison had saved them, and now they owed her safe harbor, and if Anora couldn't deal with that … well she'd just have to learn to deal with that. This was _his_ city, and she wasn't supposed to _be_ here. That had been the deal. He'd stay in his city, and she in hers. "Not that it's any of your business."

She looked at him as if he'd struck her.

"I came here because I was scared for you," she glared at him slightly.

Anders snorted a bit. "No, you came here because you wanted vengeance. It isn't the same thing." The lift hit the apartment floor and Anders slid the grate open.

"Yes. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" She jutted her jaw and lower lip out in that way she had when she was pissed off.

"Did you come here to fight? Because this is getting a little old hat, Anora." Anders crossed his arms and gave her a look that read with almost no emotion.

"No, I came here because we-"

"There is no 'we', Anora," he interjected. "Not anymore."

"Clearly. I come here, _Kahrin_ is here, not in prison. You're protecting her. What are we playing at here?" she gave him another tight lipped smile.

"_We_ are not playing at anything. This was the arrangement. We don't see one another. Remember?"

She turned and rounded on him from her pacing. "That was _your_ decision. One you made _without_ me. You never even-" She was cut off again by the sewer access grate flying off the floor and the tall, purple shapely figure busting in. She rose up tall and threw magic at them that blew them both back against opposite walls. Anders didn't waste any time grabbing a longsword and charging back after the demon just as Anora lunged at it with her stake in hand. The demon kicked Anora away neatly as Anders slashed through her middle once with the sword, sending an arc of dark purple viscera through the air. A splatter of it flew into his mouth, the taste grotesque and repulsive causing him to want to retch it up.

The face with glowing eyes and pink hair that seemed to flutter around with no wind turned right to him, as if reading him. "Easily done, vampire," the demon hissed, clutching the wound in her stomach. She retreated back to the sewer grate and slipped away while Anora attempted to chase her.

"Anora, stop," he groaned slightly, his stomach clenching in a way he was unfamiliar with.

Face full of concern, she hesitated, then let the demon go, and rushed over to his side. "Are you all right? What happened?"

He straightened himself up, looking at her hand on his arm, then pulled away. "I'm fine, just a little blood. So," he winced, hiding it from her. "The deal is, you in your city, me in mine."

Anora glared down at where her hand had been. "Fine. And when she tries to kill you again, I don't want to hear about it." She stepped over to the lift. "Enjoy your new life, Anders."

As soon as she was gone, Anders doubled over, clutching his stomach, and then his chest, hitting the floor on his knees. His mouth opened and he let out no cry, only a strained sound like a death rattle from his throat, before he fell over onto the ground.

Carver came down the stairs, since the lift was busy, his hair and shoulders smoking slightly. "Shit, I always forget. I need a blanket or an umbrella or-" He took one look at Anders spread prostrate on the floor and swore loudly. "Hey, shit, man. Are you all right?"

He rolled him over, looking for a wound and saw none.

He did, however, feel a steady thrumming in the side of his neck, which made him jump back and crawl away backward. He had a pulse. Anders had a _pulse_.

Anders sat to sitting upright, gasping for _breath_. He felt himself drawing lungfuls of air and clapped his hands to his chest. "Carver, I'm …"

He narrowed his eyes at Anders. "Alive. Bloody hell, what happened?"

"I don't know, there was a demon, and we fought it, and some of the blood got in my mouth." It burned, and his whole body ached, and he groaned while standing.

"And you wound up with a pulse? That doesn't seem _normal_, if you ask me. Where's your," Carver waved a hand around, "friend?"

"Anora? Gone. Oh, wow. Everything hurts."

"Ha. I can imagine. Being alive is … well it's alive. With everything that goes with it. Guess you forgot, huh? Anyhow." Carver frowned at him. "Should I go get Saoirse? She might know what to do."

"About my being alive? No. Don't tell her yet. Where is she?" Anders looked at Saoirse's brother, and then his face turned awkward. "I … I should tell her."

"They went for Thai food just after you all came down here. It's daylight so I had to …" he hardened his eyes at him a moment. "Oh, my _sister_? Really?" Carver gave him a fairly horrified look.

Anders lifted an eyebrow and almost chuckled. "Says the guy who's sneaking a Slayer in here five nights a week."

"Oh, ha. You noticed that, did you?" Carver backed off, helping him up, feeling the blood pumping through his Sire's veins and hearing his heart. He promptly filed this under 'weird shit', more of the things he had to get used to since he'd been turned. Since coming to Kirkwall.

They took the lift back up to the office, and Anders stood, frozen for a few moments staring at the sunbeam pouring in through the window, the motes of dust floating lazily. He walked slowly, reaching a hand out in front of him as he cautiously stepped into the light. He took a sigh of relief and walked all the way to the window, laying a hand upon it, then his forehead. "It's so warm." He looked up and out the window, a pair of amber-brown eyes looking back at him with a face he barely recognized. The last time he'd seen it his hair had been longer, and darker and … "It's been over two-hundred years. I almost forgot what … I looked like."

The breath he drew, the way his heart beat, the slight growl in his stomach, they were all things that felt too real or too vivid.

Including the thoughts that came to his mind. For the last year they had existed in the same space, and he'd watched her and kept an appropriate distance. He knew what he was, and that meant that there was nothing he could offer a human woman. He wouldn't call it pining, _per se_, but he would be lying if he hadn't often thought about what it would be like. But he'd left Ferelden because he knew that he would prevent Anora from moving on to a normal life. He kept his distance from Saoirse since they'd come here because he didn't want to stop _her_ life from continuing.

Things had suddenly changed, though. That had to mean something. He hadn't been good for her, but now, maybe …

"Hey, you alive over there?" Carver's words carried a certain irony, though it seemed to be lost on him.

Anders simply nodded once and walked out the door, with Carver still calling after him.

They were easy enough to find, the group of them. Kahrin, Finn and Saoirse, clearly waiting for Carver to come back before piling into the tiny restaurant which wasn't far from the office. It was fast for delivery when they all had to stay late for one case or another, and had the benefit of an awning that hung over the side.

"There's no way I am going back there until I'm sure that Hurricane Anora has blown out of town," Kahrin rolled her eyes, and for once, Saoirse agreed with her.

"If she stakes him, I am so not cleaning it up. It'll be better than his brooding about it for the next week." Saoirse adjusted her dark sunglasses back up her nose. "I say we eat without Carver, he doesn't eat anyhow." She waved the other two in ahead of her just as Anders cleared his throat.

"Saoirse, can I talk to you, it won't take long." He gestured to her from under the awning, startling her slightly, and she gave him an arched eyebrow, looking up and down the street.

"How did you get down here? That stupid _brother_ of mine made it two steps and forgot it was daylight." She looked at his face, which had a half-drawn smirk on it as she sort of rambled on. "Anders, what's wrong? What did she _do_ this time?"

"She didn't do anything," he said with a slight smile as he took her hand. It was warm, and he could feel that it was warm and moved to step out into the glaring sun.

Saoirse grabbed his arm and yanked him back into the shadow of the awning. "Have you lost your mind? Don't do this, it's not worth it! Don't let her get to you! You'll move on."

He gave her a puzzled expression, tilting his head slightly. "What? No, it's nothing like that," he shook his head and pulled his arm free from her grasp and stepped into the sun as she lunged for him in a panic, then stopped.

"Anders, why are you not on fire?" Her eyebrow shot up further and she pushed her glasses up on the top of her head as she stepped towards him cautiously, squinting her eyes slightly, less at the sun and more at the curious expression on his face.

Taking her hand he held it up to his chest where his heart was beating. "Something happened," he said it as if that explained it all.

She gaped at him for a few moments, at the way the sun glinted off of his hair, at the way it beat down on his rather too-pale face, how it almost embraced him warmly. "What do you mean, something hap-" The way she could feel his heart beating beneath her palm, steady and strong and very much _there_, and she nearly jerked it away, but instead pressed her hand flat and solidly into the tiny thumping. "Anders, you're," she shook her head, still disbelieving what she was seeing and _feeling_.

His fingers curled around the hand on his chest and he squeezed it slightly. "It seems that way." He wrapped an arm around to her back and pulled her closer and for the briefest of moments she seemed like she might resist or pull away.

But she didn't, and instead gripped the front of his shirt in her fists as he leaned over and met her mouth with his, and kissed her hungrily with enough intensity to blot out the sun that was warming both of their faces. As if he'd been waiting a lifetime to do just that thing.

In some ways, he had.


	10. Chapter 10

Kahrin sat on the edge of Saoirse's desk, lips pressed in a tight line, staring across the room at Finn who paced back and forth slightly. The worry was rolling off of him and she watched him like she used to watch some of the women in the exercise yard, eyes wide and eyebrow cocked.

"This is bad. It's very very bad. We don't even know what it means." Finn ran his hand back over his head, ruffling his hair as Pounce wove in and out of his legs as if trying to shed on him purposefully.

"I know what it means," Kahrin picked at a carton of leftover laap, sniffling over the ground chicken and heat on her tongue, wishing she'd thought to get more cucumbers. "They're down there, knockin' it around. I know I would be if I was just handed the ticket to the Forbidden Love of all Time."

Carver slammed the microwave door perhaps a bit too hard. "That's my _sister_, I really don't want to think about that."

"Then don't think about it," Kahrin smirked at him, sticking her chopsticks back into the carton and setting it aside. She lifted an eyebrow at him, tossing a bit of her hair back with a wink. "Think of something else."

His brown eyes glared at her. "You know I live down there, right? How am I supposed to go back down there now?"

Finn stared at first one and then the other. "Is that all you think about? This is important. The Oracles said that he's been released from the fight. The curse is gone, _Justice_ is gone. He's free to live and die as a mortal. We don't know that they are down there … taking advantage of his _situation_."

"Yeah, buddy. I'm sure they're down there having tea and crackers." Kahrin crossed her legs and pulled down on the pant leg of her leather pants to straighten it.

Anders refilled his mug and then looked at Saoirse, sitting across from him at the little kitchen table. "More tea?" He smiled a bit nervously. This wasn't particularly how he'd wanted them to wind up when he'd gone out to find her. It was, however, where they'd ended up when one of them or the other had the good sense to suggest that possibly it was needing to be discussed.

"Oh, no. I'm … I think I'm sloshing a bit." Four cups in thirty minutes was pretty close to her limit. "So."

"So." There was a pregnant pause before he continued. He hadn't really thought this through. "Look, Saoirse, I'm sorry I kissed you like that." He pursed his lips slightly to the side, then stared into his mug.

"You are?" she looked up from her mug, frowning slightly, trying not to look hurt. "Oh."

"Well, no I mean, not about the kiss itself," he decided to focus on not crushing his mug in his hands while squeezing it in frustration.

She relaxed a bit, "Oh, good, because as kisses go, it was … above average." She ran a finger around the rim of her cup.

"It was incredible. I just … I think that if we rushed into this we'd be asking for trouble." He set the mug on the counter and put his palms flat on the table.

"Right, and what if the Oracles were wrong? I mean, they could be pranksters and-"

"Then we'd be right back where we started."

She nodded firmly. "And we'd be hip deep in "grr... argh" again."

"Exactly. We should wait and see if this whole mortal things takes. I mean, it would be unfair of me to wedge myself into this part of your life if there was some loophole to it all. And it might even be dangerous, because I'm not as strong anymore. I can't fight things like I did before and-"

Saoirse tightened her lips and narrowed her eyes. "Are you going to get out a pie chart? I really do get it. It isn't like I haven't known you for years."

Anders slid his chair around and pulled it up next to her. "It's not that I don't want you. I just need to make sure that you aren't going to get hurt if this goes wrong."

Saoirse pushed back from the table and stood up, circling around the table, her steps measured. "It's a really good thing I haven't spent the last year fantasizing about this exact situation a nonillion times, playing over again and again what it would be like if you became human, because the reality would be a real downer."

"Saoirse, I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's fine." She raked a hand into her hair, catching it against the ponytail on top of her head. "How does the mature plan work? Do I go back to my apartment, you live here with my brother, and you call me when you figure it out?" She waved a hand over her shoulder.

Anders got up and walked over to her, leaning against the fridge. "No, we can stay working here, we have to stay in touch we just don't …"

"Do it literally. I get it." She looked at his hand on the wall, then met his eyes, her face pulled tight. "How about if I go home for a while, and you let me know, OK?" She placed her hand over his and squeezed it slightly, trying to memorize the feel of it being _warm_.

"It's better to remove the temptation." He turned her hand over and laced his fingers through hers.

"Right, so I'll just go and …"

It didn't matter who started it because in the next moment her hands were in his hair and she jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist and he backed her into the refrigerator kissing her hard. Looping his arms underneath her thighs he lifted her over to the table and laid her down on it, knocking the teapot and mugs to the floor.

Finn put the phone down and looked up at Kahrin and Carver. "Our demon has been spotted. Someone found her in one of the subway tunnels. We need to track her down."

"Great, let's rock and roll," Kahrin hopped down off of the desk and snagged her jacket off of the hook.

"One of us should go get Anders and Saoirse." Finn twiddled his thumbs slightly, looking between the two of them.

"Not it," Kahrin and Carver both said in unison.

"She's my _sister_, there is no way I want to walk into whatever is going on down there. I should be exempt." Carver crossed his arms over his chest as if that settled it.

Kahrin snorted. "Well, I'm not going down there. Saoirse's been repressed for like, at least the last year. No way I'm breakin' that sock hop up."

Finn's shoulders slumped as he let himself into the lift.

Saoirse laughed and scooted up to the head of the bed, pulling the sheet up around herself and clutching the carton of ice cream. "Am I dreaming? You've been human for like, a minute, and you have crunchy peanut butter on hand _and_ strawberry ice cream in your freezer. The fresh churned kind with real strawberries in it. You are amazing, you know that?"

"I could really go for a sandwich." He took a bite from the spoon she forced into his mouth. "Mmm. Why did you never tell me about chocolate and peanut butter, or _ice cream_?"

"If you're taste buds couldn't really appreciate it," she took a bite of her own and continued talking around it, "I figured there was no point in breaking your heart over it."

Anders chuckled, running a hand through her hair and brushing some of the red strands from her eyes. "Well, then thank you for sparing me." He scooped into the ice cream with a spoon and dripped some on himself trying to get it to his mouth. "Damn. Looks like my human reflexes aren't as good as my vampire ones were."

Saoirse's eyes twinkled just a bit. "I think they're just perfect." She kissed along his neck, slowing at the mess of ice cream and sucking it up gently, making him laugh from the sensation and throwing her down to tickle her.

With his back against the wall in the kitchen, to safely avert his eyes, Finn cleared his throat loudly. The laughing stopped almost immediately.

"Uh, Anders. If you're not too busy, we um, we have some information on the demon that attacked you."

He heard Anders groan slightly, then get up, and a rustling sound that was hopefully him putting on some pants. "Where?"

Keeping his eyes straight forward and concentrating on the lift in front of him, Finn told him where they'd had it tracked to.

"Then let's go." Anders came into the kitchen pulling on a black t-shirt and grabbing an axe from the cabinet on his way by.

Saoirse came hopping out, pulling her skirt back on. "I'm coming with you," she called before they could get to the lift.

"No," Anders looked at her, his face pulled down. "I'm not strong like I was before. I can't protect you."

"That's why I have to come too. This thing might be the loophole we were afraid of. You need it dead, and I'm going to help." She pulled her hair up, and grabbed a crossbow from the cabinet then dashed into the lift, sliding an arm around his waist.

When the lift hit the office floor and Finn pulled aside the gate Carver already had a greatsword and Kahrin was stretching one arm over her head with the other, bouncing slightly on her toes. "So everyone is all dressed and ready?" She waggled an eyebrow at Saoirse who pressed her lips into a line and shot her a glare.

They weren't long in the subway tunnel when they knew they were going the right way. Carver was decided in his turns, leading the way through the dark. "It's this way."

Kahrin looked at him and raised her eyebrow. "And you know this because …"

"The blood. Whatever it is, it's bleeding." He shrugged, tossing the pommel of the sword in his hand lightly and catching it effortlessly.

"Right," Kahrin said, looking at him. "That really never stops being weird. Just so you know."

A rat squeaked by and Kahrin jumped suddenly, pulling her stake up, ready to strike.

"You can bring down vampires and hellbeasts, but a rat scares you?" Saoirse snorted.

"Shut up, Red," Kahrin snapped, still gripping the wooden weapon in her hand.

"Why did you even bring that?" Carver asked, using a finger to lower her hand. "We're not fighting vampires."

Kahrin glared at him, and it had almost become an affectionate look from her. "Because I know how to use it. And it travels better than your fightin' sword, Liquid Lunch."

Carver stopped where the tunnel split and ventured off to a sewer access. "Anders, which way did it go? I can't tell."

Reflexively taking a deep whiff, Anders nearly doubled over from the stench of filth and what was possibly blood. "I … I don't know. Oh, the smell …"

Saoirse ran a hand over his back and tried to help him stand upright. "It's all right. It takes getting used to." She glanced up at Carver and Kahrin and pointed down the sewer. "Why don't you two go that way, while Finn and Anders and I will continue on up the subway here?"

Carver nodded once, firmly, and Kahrin gave Saoirse a mocking salute before she turned on her wide-heeled boot and strode down the left part of the tunnel. Carver shrugged at his sister and then took off after her, catching up easily with his long stride.

They weren't long in the subway tunnel when Finn thought he heard the hissing of something ahead. "I do not believe we are alone. Whatever that is sounds injured." He pulled his gun out of his jeans as he crept along, close to, but not touching the wall.

Anders hefted his axe in his hands, frowning slightly at how heavy it felt in his hands. Had it always been this heavy? He stood clear of Saoirse and gave it a practice swing to test his strength. He was weaker, there was no mistaking that.

Maybe it was because he was distracted by his self-described wimpy arms, or maybe it was because none of them had his keen vampire senses any longer, but the demon seemed to leap out of nowhere, and with a blast of magic she flung Finn against the wall. After the impact he seemed to shake himself off and let a round go into the demon's shoulder.

Anders swung at her, and she ducked under it easily, laughing despite the still-open wound in her middle from the day before. She stared at him intently as if she was reading something inside him and he lashed out again in a wide arc with the axe, which she dodged easily. "You are unwilling to make the trade. Fascinating."

Saoirse managed to get one arrow nocked into her crossbow and raised it up to sight. The arrow flew true and lodged itself in the demon's neck. She let out a shrill shriek, whipping around and glaring at Saoirse, and swung her hand out, sending the red head back against the wall with a resounding thud.

It was enough to distract Anders, his head whipping around just in time to see her head crack against the wall, and enough of an opening that the demon kicked the axe from his grasp and began landing blows against him, some of which he blocked, and some which he was too slow to avoid.

Finn fired off two more rounds, and the demon finally turned and went after him, allowing Anders time to get up and jump on her back. As she swiped at Finn with slightly clawed hands, Anders grabbed her head and twisted it hard, the sound of bone crunching and snapping making him nauseous.

Anders crouched down slowly and stiffly besides Saoirse, already feeling the aches and bruises from the battle. She made an effort to sit up, wincing and clearly dizzy. A dribble of blood came from her ear.

"You're hurt," Anders frowned at her.

"It's … not that bad. I've had worse. You've given me worse," she tried to smile but the dizziness was obvious. She took Finn's hand and accepted his help up off of the floor, grabbing her forehead when she was upright. "I'm fine. Really, stop looking at me like I'm going to fall over dead."

She'd had worse headaches lately. This was nothing.

Anders watched her walk ahead of them slightly, rubbing at his injured shoulder and walking alongside Finn with a noticeable limp. "I need to see the oracles again," he said just for Finn's ears.

Finn gave him a puzzled look. "The Oracles? Anders, they aren't going to like being-"

"Make it happen, Finn." He looked ahead as Saoirse paused, getting her bearings again, and continued walking. "I think I just found the loophole."


	11. Chapter 11

Finn stood in front of the alter of the Gateway for Lost Souls, which, incidentally, was beneath the Post Office, dumping some foul smelling powder into it. It tickled Anders' nose and made him want to sneeze. Sneezing, something he hadn't done for over two centuries, an annoying human reflex and yet something he found he enjoyed. The sensations that he had missed, so many of them, he tried to memorize.

"They are not going to be pleased with you visiting again, Anders. They are finicky and unpredictable. I must advise again against this." Finn gave him one last questioning look.

"I have to. I have to know what all of this means. You saw what happened to Saoirse. I've been in this game for too long. Things like that are going to keep coming at me, and she's going to get caught in the cross fire trying to help me. They will keep coming, and she will always try to help, and that makes me a liability." He shielded his eyes from the bright flash of light that flared from the archway as it opened, making the way for him to pass.

"Then get in, and get back." Finn rubbed a hand over his face as Anders jumped through the archway.

"What are you doing back here, Lower Being?" the man asked him, a deep frown pulling at his blue face, the gold lining his eyes crinkling. "We are not here to entertain your whims."

"Silence, brother, and let us hear him out," the woman held up an hand, silencing him. "What have you brought us, mortal?" She gave him a whimsical smile with a tilt of her head, making her tight ringlets bob and detracting slightly from the seriousness of the moment.

Anders held up an antique pocket watch. It had been a gift from Velanna when they passed through Switzerland. He's seen a man check it, and had indicated his appreciation of the time piece. Velanna had wasted no time in eating the owner and presenting Anders with it that same night.

The watch flew from his hand and into the woman's, and she looked at it with excitement often seen in children at Christmas. "I like time," she exclaimed happily. "There is so much of it, and yet so little. Your offering is acceptable."

"Say your piece then, Lower Being, and get out of here." The man crossed his arms, looking like the tragedy mask to his sister's pleasant smile.

"The demon who did this to me, she mentioned an exchange. A price?" Anders cut straight to the chase. "What is the price for my life?"

"It doesn't concern you any more, mortal." The man turned his back to Anders and walked towards the lit tunnel behind him. "You are not a Champion in this fight anymore. Go live your life."

"What about _her_? What's going to happen to her?" He demanded, and the woman looked up at him, her expression slightly bemused.

"The same thing that happens to all mortals. Just, in her case, sooner," she said airily. "It isn't your concern anymore. Her path is no longer your path."

An icy dread crept through Anders. "She'll die? But she's also just a mortal."

"It isn't for lower beings to understand. You accepted the offer of the demon. There is always a price for that. You've been in this world too long to think otherwise," the man's emotionless voice tore at Anders.

"I didn't accept anything, least of all anything that would take her life." He looked between the two Oracles angrily.

The woman shook her head. "You fought a demon, you won. Life goes on." She paced in front of him as if she were floating.

"But things are going to keep coming at her, at me, and I can't stop it." Anders raked his hands into his hair.

The man looked at him levelly, his cool eyes devoid of irises or pupils, yet Anders knew he was staring straight through him. "This is the way of things. Move aside and let the new Champion follow her path. Short though it may be."

Anders blinked with sudden understanding. "But, if she dies, then you'll lose two warriors for your cause. This demon has already left you down one. I'm no good to you like this. And she doesn't know about whatever this is. She isn't connected to the Powers That Be. I know you can make this right. _Please_."

"For now. There is little we can do about the rest. A life was the price." The woman shrugged almost helplessly.

Anders was quiet for what felt like half of an eternity, silently fuming. He'd lived long enough that after a while time slipped by and he didn't notice any more. A month could be minutes, and vice versa. He finally looked up at both of them. "Then take mine back. Take it back and let us keep fighting together."

The man splayed his hands out beside him and snorted. "This is about love. We do not meddle in such trivialities. We do not barter with lower beings. Be gone."

"Wait, brother." The woman held a hand up and silenced him again. "He is willing to give up his life, his mortality, every drop of potential happiness he has, in order to spare her an early death. Is that the way of it, mortal?" Her golden eyebrow raised over eyes that nearly danced with curiosity.

Swallowing hard once, Anders considered what she was asking. One day and he'd had exactly what he'd been wanting. It wasn't worth it, however, if her life was the cost. There could be no _them_ if there was no _her_. He nodded once, firmly, his mind made up. "That's right. Her life for mine."

The woman turned to smile at her brother, dark curls springing about her head. "You see? He's not a lower being. He's still a Champion."

"What was done can not be undone, sister, and you _know_ this."

Waving her hand, dismissing her brother, she nearly laughed. "That's not necessarily true."

The man's eyes shot wide, and he grumbled, "Temporal folds are not to indulge whims. They are dangerous and complicated."

"So there's a way?" Anders didn't dare become too hopeful, but he couldn't keep the eagerness from his voice.

"It is not to be taken lightly. You must be prepared to accept the consequences," she tilted her head at him. "Are you?"

Anders clutched at his hair. Was he ready to give up the thumping in his chest? _Which is stronger when she's around_. Was he ready to go back to an eternity of watching everyone around him wither and die? _A mortal life without her in it is no life_. Was he ready to accept the curse of Justice back into him? _Sacrifices often need to be made._

"I am." He said it simply, but firmly. There was no turning back now.

"We swallow the day. Twenty-four hours from when the demon first attacked, we'll take it back to give you another chance." The woman looked at him intently, her colourless eyes staring through him as if reading him.

"So, everything we had, it will be …"

"It never happened. That is what we offer," the woman shrugged simply and turned, walking in a wide circle in front of the lit tunnel behind them.

"What's to stop everything from turning out the same?" he demanded. He hadn't been alive for over two centuries by being a fool.

"You." The woman Oracle stopped her pacing, running her fingers over the casing of the pocket watch. "You alone will carry the memories, and you must use them to your advantage." She paused and looked at him, suddenly grave. "Are you willing to carry that burden? By yourself?"

It meant that Saoirse had a chance at living longer. It meant they could keep fighting side-by-side. It meant that he would get to see what all this talk of "her path" was really about.

"I am," he said without hesitation.

He landed in a heap outside the Archway and at Finn's feet. "They wouldn't see you?" Finn looked startled.

"What are you talking about? I just got back."

"You just went in, just now, Anders." Finn ran a hand over his head.

"No, they saw me. I have my answers. We need to get back, now." Anders started walking for the tunnel that would lead back to the apartment, Finn on his heels.

"What did they say, Anders?" Finn had to nearly run to keep up.

Anders stopped and gave him a calm expression. There was no use in getting worked up over it. "It doesn't matter. It's taken care of."

Finn looked as if he might argue for a moment, cleaning his glasses on his shirt, then gave up and simply followed.

Anders found Saoirse pacing the kitchen of his apartment when the lift landed on the bottom floor and he pushed the gate aside.

"There you are!" she set down a bottle of pain killers and crossed the floor to him, placing hands on his elbows. Anders touched the bandage at the side of her head that Carver had taped on after raging at him for not keeping his sister safer. "What did they say? I'm guessing by the look on your face they didn't ask you to stay for tea and a chipper little pep talk."

Taking a deep breath, and _trying to relish_ the way that breath felt, because it might be the last time he had the chance to think over it. "There was a price for my life. So I asked them to turn me back."

She blinked only once at him, taking a full step back. "You did _what_? Why?"

He moved towards her, needing to feel the contact of her warmth against him. "Because I know now, more than ever, how much I love you."

"No, no you _didn't_," she shook her head at him, looking almost disgusted.

"If I stay mortal, one of us is going to wind up dead," he gave her a hard and meaningful look, keeping his composure barely contained. "Maybe both of us. The demon exacted a price and-"

"She's dead. We killed her."

"There will be more, you know there will be more. Just because I've been released doesn't mean they will stop coming." He reached out for her and she backed away again.

"There will _always_ be more of them, Anders. Ever since I came here things have attacked us, you, Bethany, Carver, me. We fight them."

"I can't fight them like this. You saw what happened. We almost died down there." He spoke softly, regret heavy in his voice.

"So, what? You took a day and weighed the pros and cons of being human, made a handy list, and decided that you preferred being Joe Superhero? She shook her head back and forth, as if she could toss the thought out with the motion.

"You know that's not it, Saoirse," he pulled her to him, feeling the warmth of her, smelling the way her hair smelled in his mortal nose, dulled by his human senses but still there and part of being alive. "How can we be together if the cost is your life, or the lives of others?"

She sagged against him, seemingly deflated. She knew he was right. Deep down she knew. "I understand." There was a pregnant pause before she asked, "So what happens now?"

"The Oracles swallow the day. They give it back so I can kill the demon before her blood turns me."

"What?" She pulled back and looked at him. "When?"

Anders looked up at the tall clock in the next room, easily visible from where they stood, embracing. "Another minute."

Saoirse pulled her head back and stared at him, her eyes starting to water. "That's not enough time!"

"If I'd had to wake up next to you, I wouldn't have been strong enough to do this. It had to be now." His voice hitched over the last words.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. "How am I supposed to just go back to the way things were, knowing what we had?"

"You won't," he answered quietly. "It will be like it never happened, and only I'll remember."

"But everything we did, what we felt?"

"It never happened."

She placed a hand over his heart and clenched her eyes. "But it _did_. It happened, Anders. I won't forget that. I felt your _heart_ beating. I _listened to it_ next to my ear. That's not something you forget. It happened. It did, all of it." She glanced back at the clock. "No, no, it's not enough time."

He kissed her hard and then held the back of her head in one hand. "Saoirse, I'm so sorry. Please."

"No. I won't forget. I promise I won't forget. I'll never forget this." She cried in heaving sobs and he held her to him, tears rolling down his face.

"Please, please, Saoirse." He hushed into her ear, his voice warbling.

"I'll never forget. I won't forget."

He kissed her forehead and held his lips there, memorizing the smoothness of her skin, the taste of her tears, as the whole room flashed bright.

Then he looked up.

"I came here because I was scared for you," Anora glared at him slightly.

Anders hesitated for a moment, his chest still, and the tears dried from his face. He stared at the floor for a beat before looking back at Anora, his face pained.

"No, you came here because you wanted vengeance. It isn't the same thing."

"Yes. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" She jutted her jaw and lower lip out in that way she had when she was pissed off.

"Did you come here to fight? Because this is getting a little old hat, Anora." Anders crossed his arms and gave her a look that read with almost no emotion.

"No, I came here because we-"

"There is no 'we', Anora," he interjected, softly. "Not anymore."

"Clearly. I come here, __Kahrin__is here, not in prison. You're protecting her. What are we playing at here?" she gave him another tight lipped smile.

"__We__are not playing at anything. This was the arrangement. We don't see one another. Remember?"

She turned and rounded on him from her pacing. "That was __your__decision. One you made __without__me.

You never even-"

This time, when the demon sprang up from the grate he shoved Anora out of the way and stepped forward, grabbing the horned beast by the head and twisting it violently, killing her before there was a chance for her to blast them into the wall with magic.

Anora blinked at him from the other side of the kitchen, visibly impressed. "That was quick."

Anders shrugged. "I've had time to study up on this kind of demon. You have to kill them quickly."

"Right." She gave him another hard look. "Well, then, we just go back to the plan, and I'll go back to my city, and you stay here in yours." She let herself into the lift and slammed the gate shut with a loud rattle. "Enjoy your new life, Anders. And don't come crying when Kahrin tries to kill you. Again."

Anders slumped and rested against the table for a few moments, then got up and put the teapot away.

"Carver if you're coming with us, you're going to need a blanket or an umbrella or something shady." Saoirse slung her purse over one shoulder and pulled her sunglasses back over her face, calling to him cheerily. "I don't what brother en flambe."

"Yeah, Liquid Lunch, you being dust is going to put a damper on what I have planned later." Kahrin gave him a swat across the ass as she and Saoirse followed Finn out the door.

Saoirse shot Kahrin a look that clearly said she didn't want to hear anymore. "We'll just meet you there, Carver, all right?" Saoirse said with a chipper lift to her voice and pulled the office door shut behind her, just glad for an excuse to avoid the aftermath of Hurricane Anora.


End file.
